Wanderlust – Page 5 – Snapshots & My Thoughts by Ailee Petrovic

International June 1, 2015

Final Days in Russia

We landed in Houston yesterday after traveling for 18 hours from St. Petersburg to Frankfurt back home. The two flights we took on our trip back to Texas were infinitely better than the ones going to Europe, as Isla slept much longer (thanks to Frozen being played on repeat) and I didn’t get sick. Isla will probably be battling jet lag for a few days, as I think it’s much easier for adults to acclimate than it is for babies. I cannot (repeat: cannot) believe that we will be celebrating her first birthday on Thursday and throwing her a confetti-themed party on Saturday. It makes me want to cry, so let’s not talk about it for now.

The last two days in Russia were spent doing something I’m normally not the best at on a site-seeing vacation: relaxing. We saw a few historical monuments (but did so leisurely), and it wasn’t on purpose. It wasn’t until the eleventh hour that we realized our planned day-trip cannot work because the palace is closed for a private event, so we decided to seize the opportunity to leisurely stroll through the city, eat our favorite frozen yogurt, drink our favorite cocktails (to go) and eat at our favorite restaurants. I am going to publish a detailed St. Petersburg travel guide to add to my City Guide collection, and I cannot wait to share all of the must-sees of this gorgeous Russian city.

Some of the highlights from our last two days in the city included:

Going to Vasilyevsky Island and taking our first family photo of the trip next to the Stock Exchange and Rostal Columns on the Strelka.
Eating lunch at Restoran, which seriously looked like a Restoration Hardware catalog and I was gushing over the decor the entire time we were there – the food was delicious too!
Walking around the Peter and Paul Fortress, including the beach area and the famous cathedral.
Playing with Isla in Alexandrovsky Park, where she made the longest walks we’ve ever seen – this shocked us, as her walking progress had halted since we got to Europe. She had one epic tumble at the end, and we called it quits for the day.
Getting frozen yogurt for the third time at Egurti (please see the Russian name for this to better understand our constant confusion!).
Eating at Leica, Cafe Idiot and Furtuk (again – love it!) – the food in St. Petersburg was phenomenal. I am starting BBG immediately.
Visiting the beautiful Kazan Cathedral, which was holding a service, so we lit candles, walked around and quietly left.
Exploring a Russian grocery store (Stockmann) – we bought lots of dried mango and granola bars, both which were delicious. It’s quite interesting not being able to read food packaging whatsoever.

Sasha and I recapped our trip during the long journey home yesterday, and we made a lot of wonderful memories over the last 10 days. We laughed and laughed when we both had Isla’s new obsession with waving to everyone at the top of our lists. She would literally wave incessantly at every single person in a cafe until they waved back. It was the funniest thing. Europe really brought out her friendly side.

What are your thoughts? Would you ever visit St. Petersburg? Where is the favorite place you’ve ever visited?

International May 28, 2015

Welcome to Санкт-Петербург!

It’s late here in St. Petersburg, and we’ve just finished our second full day. We arrived on Tuesday at our hotel around 4pm, so we just wandered around the city after unpacking to get our bearings. My crazy itinerary (see this post on planning) has a number of restaurants picked out from various sources (Trippy, Lonely Planet, TripAdvisor, etc.), and I had Fartuk lined up for dinner that night. We wandered the streets aimlessly looking for a Fartuk sign, only to eventually turn on Data Roaming on my phone in order to see the actual street address. It turns out all restaurants are written in Cyrillic (like St. Petersburg is in the blog post title)… cue lots of confusion in trying to find the Latin-names. Sasha speaks passable Serbian and his parents both read and write in Cyrillic, but unfortunately he doesn’t. So far, we have played lots of charade with people at stores and in restaurants. There is not a lot of English spoken here, which is exciting but confusing all at the same time. I love the thrill of this though (except probably in high stress situations, which we hope to avoid!).

Anyways, our meal at Fartuk was one of the best we’ve both ever eaten, and the atmosphere was perfect too (seriously considering scratching future plans to go back). Come to find that a ton of restaurants here in St. Petersburg are très trendy – the Russians know what they’re doing on the food scene. I’m going to do a detailed St. Petersburg travel guide when I get home, but to rattle off a few of the things we’ve enjoyed so far:

Visiting the Hermitage Museum, which is one of the largest in the world and is totally gorgeous and seriously could take all day to wander around. We caved and got English audio guides, which were really helpful. Our favorite sighting was Da Vinci’s Madonna and Child. We wandered through Palace Square before entering (as well as looped around St. Isaac’s Cathedral, which was swamped with tourists).
Strolling through the city’s many parks, including Alexander Park and Mikhailovsky Gardens. Isla needs to get out and stretch her legs after riding around (and napping) in the stroller for a lot of the site-seeing.
Going to the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood, which was one of the most gorgeous sites I’ve ever seen. The inside was covered in detailed mosaics, and we spent ages just looking at all of the intricate scenes inside.
Taking a cruise through the many canals of the city (called “Venice of the North”) – passing the Mariinsky Theater, among many other iconic sites.
Popping into the Faberge Museum – we’re trying to decide on an egg for Isla (probably a teensy tiny one!) – the music ones remind me so much of Anastasia.
Eating delicious meals and drinking coffee/homemade lemonade (something every restaurant has!) at Azia, Fartuk, Zoom Cafe (another favorite), White Night Istanbul, Park Dzhuzeppe, Coffee Bar Bonch, and Coffee Shop.

Fancy a glass of … umm, bubbly? Any guess how to pronounce that?

International May 25, 2015

Au Revoir, Paris!

I’m not sure if you’ve heard the phrase “When we make plans, God laughs,” but I’d like to adapt it slightly for our trip: “When we make plans, Isla _____.” This morning, our grand plans to get out and about early were thwarted by Isla sleeping until 11am after going to bed later than normal last night. Normally, I would be anxious to get the day started, but I was admittedly very tired, so we lay in bed until 10:30 and then got ready so that we could scoot our as soon as Isla woke up. We ate breakfast at the apartment, then went to Le Fregate for coffee before deciding to nix Le Musee D’Orsay and go to Le Marais. We stopped for an obligatory photo on the Lock Bridge, then wandered by Hotel De Ville on our way to lunch. We intended to eat at L’As Du Fallafel, which is very famous and delicious, but it was closed for the French holiday, so we ate at my favorite – Chez Marianne. I ate there all of the time when I was living in Paris, as it was affordable and you got a lot of food (bonus!).

After lunch, we looked at the time and realized that the walking tour we wanted to go on (with Paris Walks) started in 30 minutes, and we were a 40 minute walk from the starting point. Cue us speed-walking through the streets, anxious to get the Vavin metro on time. Arriving just a few minutes late, Isla woke up promptly as the tour began and was ready to roam around and not be held or confined to her stroller. So alas, we dropped out of the Hemingway tour (sob, sob, sob), got gelato and yogurt again at Amorino, bought Isla some new French shoes at Catimini, then went to roam Luxembourg Gardens.

After almost an hour of Isla making new friends all around us (photo evidence below), we walked back towards the apartment, stopping for a few necessities at the Monoprix, then having dinner at Cafe de Paris, where I ate with my dad when he visited me in 2009. Dinner was so tasty (Sasha’s favorite meal in Paris), but we were both ready to rest our feet (mine very blistered at this point). We came home, packed, then did Isla’s bed routine and put her to sleep in her BABYBJORN travel crib (which we adore).

We’re getting picked up by a car at 3am tomorrow to take us to the airport, so prayers for Isla’s mood for the rest of the day are appreciated. We didn’t book that early of a flight months and months ago, but flight schedules change and we can’t control them!

I hope everyone in the US had a wonderful Memorial Day! xo

International May 24, 2015

Un Petit Recap of Paris

Bonjour from Paris! I had some very grandiose dreams of posting a daily recap and photos at the end of every day, et voila – day three and here’s the first post. We are go-go-go all day long, so in the evening when we get home (around 10pm), we just fall asleep!

A quick summary from our first few days in the City of Lights: When we arrived at our apartment rental on Friday at 3pm, we were starving, so walked to nearby Cafe Le Buci for lunch and wine. We both loved our meals, and Isla was eating up the attention of people walking by our table waving back at her. We headed towards Rue du Bac metro, as we wanted to go to Montmartre to see Sacre-Coeur, but unfortunately, there was a fire in the metro, so it was closed. We decided to walk to the Eiffel Tower, which was 3 miles from our apartment. It seemed like a great idea on the way there, but on the way back we were pretty tired! With jetlag and a lot of moving around, we were exhausted and went to the Monoprix (France’s Target equivalent) to get groceries, which we ate for dinner and then all went to sleep.

Isla woke up around 7am, so we ate cereal and then headed out to Les Deux Magots for coffee (I’m such a dork about this place – read the history here). Sasha headed back to the apartment to do another load of laundry, so Isla and I roamed around for 15 minutes, before meeting him and heading across the Seine towards the Louvre. We’ve both been before, so we skipped out on this tourist activity and walked through the Tuileries towards L’Orangerie – one of my favorite museums in the world (second only to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam). Afterwards, we walked to the metro then traveled to Montmartre, where we ate lunch at Le Carrousel (Creperie Broceliande was on the agenda, but was closed for vacation) and made friends with an English couple visiting from Vienna. Isla walked to a few tables, making new friends. She loves it here.

We then took the funicular up to Sacre-Coeur, as the stairs are hard to manoeuver with the stroller. We walked around the beautiful church, then strolled down the winding streets towards Le Moulin Rouge, stopping only to get Sasha a crepe. Afterwards, we took the metro to St. Paul in the Marais, where we wandered down Rue de Sevigne, stopping into Sandro and Comptoir des Cotonniers, two of my favorite clothing stores here. We got gelato and frozen yogurt at Amorino, then went to Places des Vosges to lay on the grass and eat it. It was already 5:30pm at that time, so we walked for 40 minutes back to the St. Germain area (stopping for many photo opps), and fed Isla dinner, bathed her, then put her PJs on and put her in the stroller (she fell asleep minutes into our walk!). Our dinner search was a bit of a fiasco, as the places I had read online to go to did not have any vegetarian options, so we kept going from one area to the next looking for the ‘right place’ and at 9:30pm, we were too exhausted and no longer hungry, so called it quits. We have had a few good laughs about it since.

This morning, we woke up late and were scurrying around to get out of the door to go to the French Open. We took the metro from Mabillon to Boulogne – Jean Jaures, and walked for five minutes to the Roland Garros stadium. My parents bought Sasha and I special level passes for his birthday, as all of the general entry tickets sold out immediately. We were so grateful for this gift, as it was nice for Isla to be able to roam around the carpeted indoor lounge, given that one of her shoes fell off while walking around the stadium. No strollers were allowed into the grounds, so our fail-proof plan to have her nap while we walked around didn’t quite pan out, but she was a trooper none-the-less. She had the guests and lounge staff loving on her quickly with all of those waves. We bought her a big pink Roland Garros tennis ball, which she tried to give to everyone near her. It was adorable.

We left around 6pm after watching Roger Federer and Jo Wilfred Tsonga (my two favorite players!). It was such an incredible day – one we’ll never forget. We got on the metro and went back to St. Germain, where we ate at Cafe Bonaparte. We loved our waiter and had our favorite meal yet. Sasha ate beef tartar for the first time and was rather nervous he was going to die from the raw egg and beef! Such an American (ha).

Tomorrow is our last day in Paris (wah!), and then we leave for Russia. It’ll be another busy, busy day, as there is still so much to do and see before we leave my favorite city. More photos to come soon! xo

Wanderlust May 21, 2015

My Paris Love Story

I started taking French lessons in 6th grade, as part of a rotational elective. And I was immediately hooked. My fascination for the capital city, Paris, grew and grew over the years, and I continued studying French for 10 years (I minored at The University of Texas).

My very first encounter with Paris was a layover in Charles De Gaulle Airport on our way to South Africa. I was like a kid in a candy shop, walking around reading signs, absorbing the dialogue going on around me. I loved it. Growing up in Texas meant everyone studied Spanish, so to be in a city where everyone was speaking my language was like a dream come true. I even ordered a drink on our Air France flight in French and smiled for hours after doing so.

A year later, I was looking for ways to spend an entire summer in Paris, but knew that I didn’t want to do a study abroad program and be tied to classwork and living with a family or in a dormitory. I reached out to a contact I had made at a prior internship, as her husband was French and had connections with businessmen in Paris. Through Meg, I found a part time summer internship with a company now named PetroWire. Luckily for me, my boss rented out a part of their gorgeous, large Parisian home, so my accommodation was taken care of as well.