I could walk for ever ( it felt as though I did, every day and every night for four weeks)along the fabulous St Petersburg waterways. On Summer nights when the sun has not set until about 10PM and darkness only fleetingly appears, young revellers and lovers sit on the canal terraces canoodling, drinking, smoking and generally arguing the world to rights ( or at least better than this city has fared these past 70 years or so)Lenin kicked off the Bolshevik revolution here-right next door to the Smolny Institute leading to the changing of its name to Leningrad (where I pretended to learn Russian for three weeks)from here the Romanoffs went to their deaths in Ykaterinburg, their remains were recently returned and interred here with full christian rites, the Nazis besieged it for almost three years resulting in a million dead citizens and now the most famous contemporary St Petersburger, Vladimir Putin has lavished restoration money on it and gathered around him in Moscow, a coterie of old St Petersburg as well as ex KGB chums.
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