Walking, culture and alcohol

I was a bit tired, so I slept in. During this period, my dad ventured forth to hunt down a supermarket. This he eventually found, amidst heavy rain and skeptical locals... his return was accompanied by another discovery of the odd local traditions. Apparently, all supermarket milk is off (despite being in date). This was confirmed the following day, and henceforth black tea and coffee is the only option.

Anyway, dairy aside, we decided to explore the church of spilled blood. In the absence of immediate photos, google it. Amazing stuff, both outside and in, but a bit of a monument to Russian excess. There's quite a lot of this about, you can almost see why there was a bit of a revolution here a while back...

Happily, this is right next to where we're staying, meaning the national museum is close enough too - our next destination. Another surreal moment presented itself in the museum café, wherein yet more unsuitable western music was playing. Otherwise, relatively little to report from this visit.

However, our trip to a nearby local market was entertaining, despite the lack of vendors braving the heavy rain (seriously? It's Russia!). Apparently, the umpteenth bloke who attempted to sell us russian dolls had been in the army when the American landed a plane in the Red Square during the cold war... His lack of language skills was no barrier to his clear enthusiasm as he regaled his story. While interesting, we didn't buy any dolls, fake medals or neon Russian hats. Poor guy.

Next came a shopping centre visit,  as my dad showed me the fruits of his earlier labour- pre groceries, we stopped in a place I only remember as 'orange'. While the colour was pretty much ubiquitous, it wasn't as bad as you'd expect from a Russian restaurant bearing an English colour for a name in a shopping centre.  Really! Having navigated the language barrier, I had some local wheat beer and venison. Relatively cheap and tasty! The only weird aspect was Jamie Oliver on all of the televisions with Russian dubbing throughout. But ya know, it'd be disappointing without something a touch odd about the evening.

Champansky, or insanely cheap yet decent russian champagne equivalent was then bought as we then made our way back to our accommodation from the flat. It's really rather good!

Final thought- there's some sort of ability Russians possess not just to withstand cold, but shifts from cold to hot and back again.  Genuinely, these people wear enormous winter cloaks on the metro and I'm sat there having stripped to 2 layers (this is an effort), sweating my own body weight! Maybe I'll build up this ability over time...