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RUSSIA Nearly every world-class city boasts a famous boulevard designed to inspire dreams. Fifth Avenue personifies the best of New York City. Oxford Street is the axis upon which London spins. Champs-Élysées epitomizes the grandiosity of Paris, and Orchard Road hails as Singapore's most alluring thoroughfare.
Move over babushka. Since the cold war ended, the Russian female image has changed dramatically. While standing starry-eyed on Nevsky Prospekt, women sauntered past me like supermodels in a post-glasnost dream. Blonde Russians. Black Russians. Russians with Asian features. Tall, proud, and with postures that would delight the head mistress of a finishing school, they dressed as if strutting down a catwalk in Milan. They wore stylish dresses and designer pumps, mini skirts and provocative tops, elegant shawls with matching berets, and funky two-piece outfits sheathed in billowing transparent cloaks.
This is what surprised me about the 300-year-old port city. With so much raw beauty and in-your-face sensuality, not once did I see a woman hassled by a man. Not on the street. Not in the shops. Not even in the deep, dark recesses of the metro stations through which thousands of lone women pass daily. St. Petersburg boasts some of the world's most provocatively dressed females (summer only), and yet they seem to walk around without being pestered by men.
It's easy to understand why the structure took 24 years to complete. Similar to other Byzantine dome-style churches like Moscow's famous St. Basil's Cathedral, the Church on Spilled Blood is crowned with large multi-colored onion domes of astonishing character and beauty. Unable to stay focused on this architectural marvel, my attention soon diverted toward a different kind of beauty. Hoards of women – many dressed in summer white – strolled up and down Nevsky Prospekt like armies of angels. Trying to keep rubber-necking to a minimum, I moved up the street and stopped to admire the Stroganov Palace.
Soon after the family moved in, they acquired a reputation for serving hearty lunches to St. Petersburg's elite. Beef, it seems, was often on the menu. Their French chef, hoping to find a way to feed many mouths, decided to get creative. He sautéed the beef, sliced it into thin strips and served it with onions and mushrooms in a sour cream sauce. The popular dish became known the world over as Beef Stroganoff. Such culinary revelations are lost upon a single man who finds himself standing face-to-face with a drop-dead gorgeous woman. But there I was on Nevsky Prospekt, less than a yard away from one of the most beautiful women on Earth.
Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin is Russia's most beloved poet and the great-grandson of Abrahm Hannibal, an Ethiopian slave. Hannibal managed to upgrade his position and eventually became a general under Peter the Great. Born in 1799 to a noble family in Moscow, Pushkin graduated from the Imperial Lyceum at Tsarkoye Selo and soon found himself enlisted at the ministry of foreign affairs in St. Petersburg. There he enjoyed the privileged life of a young poet. But in 1820, when authorities got hold of his anti-government piece, "Ode to Liberty," he was exiled to the Caucasus.
Russia's great poet died two days later, on February 10, 1837, from wounds he suffered at the duel. Baron D'Anthés, bastard that he was, went on to marry Natalya's sister. Pushkin ate his last meal at the Literary Café, on the second floor of a classically designed building on Nevsky Prospekt. Today, it's a popular restaurant and tourist attraction. The food is pretty good too. And from the windows at the front of the restaurant you can look down and watch the daily beauty parade. If Pushkin's wife Natalya was half as stunning as the ladies I saw on Nevsky Prospekt, I understand why he tried to shoot her suitor. click here for more images of Russia Next
stop: Tallin, Estonia
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