And Mindy too!

My all time favorite place to have traveled had to be St. Petersburg, Russia. Ufa was wonderful too, but I lived there for four months, so I wasn't as much of a tourist. St. Petersburg was absoutely beauitful, even with half the city under construction. I was there for about a week, and saw quite a few of the tourist sites. I spent a lot of time at the Hermitage - several palaces combine to make one giant museum. Trina would have loved it there. Tons and tons of artwork and statues; famous pieces by Raphael, Rodin, van Gogh, Picasso, da Vinci, Monet, Rembrandt, Michelangelo .. and lots more. I even saw the full statue of the bust I had sculpted back at BYU-I. I spent at least six hours there, hurrying a lot of the time, and I still didn't see everything. St. Petersburg was also were I saw my very first snowflake - I'd seen snow before, but this was the REAL stuff. Cutting out snowflakes from paper with all the unique designs .. they were just like that. No wet clumps of ice .. real, true, shaped snowflakes. It was amazing. And then there was the Blinni shack. When I go back, I HAVE to go there again. Blinni are similar to pancakes or crepes, depending on how you make them. You could watch through the windows as they made large, thin blinni fresh on the griddle .. and then put whatever toppings you'd like on it, and then fold it up and hand it out to you. Terra, Diane and I were there our last morning, and so for breakfast we had chocolate/banana ones. Oooohh SO good. Later in the day, after it had started snowing (and snowing and snowing) we got some again, this time with cheese. And although it was cold (since it was November), it was totally worth every bit.