Roads Less Traveled

If you’re like me, the first thing you do when planning a trip to Europe is to consult the Rick Steves country guide.  I’ve been buying his popular books for years, and I’m rarely disappointed or confused with the recommendations or itineraries.  That is, until I decided to go to Norway…

I just hiked the Alum Cave Bluffs Trail in the Great Smokey Mountains National Park, and it was a real joy.  The Fall weather was perfect, the trail was perfectly clean, and the scenery was as magnificent as any on God’s canvas.  Here I’m hoping to provide you with some quick tips if you decide to take the same hike…things that they won’t tell you at the Ranger Station (or anywhere else, so far as I know):

Saint Petersburg doesn’t reveal her beauty to you all at once.  To discover her secrets, you must work at it patiently, like a sculptor who reveals the appeal of a cold slab of stone by chipping away at it gently until the statue beneath is revealed in all its glory.  So to appreciate this city properly, you must be prepared to spend a few weeks (or months)…impossible for a mere tourist, of course…but there you have it.

I say this because, even though I have spent a considerable amount of time and money to see the best attractions here, I’m always left thinking that I hurried too much and left much unseen.  There was that corridor in the Hermitage filled with Grecian urns and Etruscan antiquities that I couldn’t break free from my tour group to see.  There was the crypt with the relics of St. John of Kronstadt that I should have requested to view long in advance.  There was the dingy bar off Neva Street that offers over 100 flavors of vodka, many of which contain the dregs of some unknown herbs or spices, and all of which the bartender can explain to you in exquisite detail and completely incomprehensible English if you ask him.  I know this because on my first trip I only tried a few of them, leaving me wanting more when I finally woke up.  And now, having just left this grand city, once again, I feel like I barely scratched the surface of her charms.