The Smolny Insitute and Nevsky Cemetary

Today after class we all piled into the bus, as usual, to go to the Smolny Institute. It used to be a girls school for aristocratic girls before the Revolution, but then the Bolshevik government was there (before it moved to Moscow) and Lenin had apartments there. It was pretty cool to see.

They had crazy security and some man had to follow us like an escort. When our tour was done we went to check out the Cathedral. It is beautiful from the outside, but the inside was closed except for the gift shop. I didn't buy anything though.

When I was leaving, an ash blew in my eye. It took us all to coordinate where we were going and because of conflicting opinions on the best route, we split up to go to the Metro. Incidentally, we all arrived there at the exact same time.

Melissa and Nathan and Kelly went home, but Tricia, Ali, Katherine, David and I all went to Patio Pizza for dinner. Katherine was cranky and just read her book. There was really weird music playing and David and I were laughing about it and singing along. After that, Tricia and David went home and the three of us went to see the Nevsky cemetery.

It was absolutely breathtaking. We weren't allowed to take pictures though, so we were laughing, trying to hide from the guy who worked there. We saw Tchaikovsky, Glinka, Mussorgsky, Borodin, Dostoevsky, and more.

After the cemetery, I bought two (?) in the gift shop and we headed home.