The Camera Scare.

And what would a vacation be without a "did I loose the camera!!" scare?

On the walk from the hostel to the train station, I tripped in the middle of the street and all my stuff spilled everywhere. My friends picked up all the stuff that spilled from my purse -- I thought -- and we tried to keep going before cars got impatient and hit the gas regardless of expected pity.

We took the overnight train from St. Petersburg to Vilnius, being sporatically woken by guards at the Russian border, then the Latvian border (in-between which there is neutral territory) to check our passports. In Vilnius, we got on a bus that took us straight back to LCC. But in between the train and the bus, I realized my camera -- which is actually my mom's camera -- was not in my coat pocket, where it spent most of my trip. So I went back on the train to see if it had fallen out. It was not on the train. The best I could do was hope that it was in my bag, though I had no recollection of packing it there. I thought -- maybe it fell out of my pocket when I fell on my face, and someone didn't pick it up. Or someone ELSE picked it up.

Well, long story short, after the 4-hour bus ride of being stressed, worried that my camera, and my photos, were being enjoyed by a Petersburg thug, I found out that I had tucked it into my souvenier bag. Which means that I can share some photos with you now!!


In the Church of Spilt Blood -- the whole inside is a mosaic.


Dostoevsky's hat at his last flat where he wrote The Brothers Karamazov. (This was taken before I was kindly informed in Russian that you're not allowed to take photos there...)


A view from St. Isaac's Cathedral.


The view from the bridge with it is presumed by locals to be the spot where Raskolnikov stares into the river in deep thought. Ah!!


The Pushkin statue under which I got to sit and write -- Good-looking guy!