St. Petersburg, often called "The Venice of the North," "The Window on the West," "Russia's Crown Jewel,"and "The Cradle of the Revolution." These attempts to sum up St. Petersburg in a few words only scratch the surface, focusing on its history and its look, and can't fully convey the energy pulsating from the spires and waterways, crumbling facades, and torn-up roads. St. Petersburg, like Russia as a whole, is hurtling forward like a jet-propelled gorilla in zero gravity.

It is this strange energy that gives St. Petersburg its special allure. There are many reasons to visit St. Petersburg, a city filled with cultural, historical, and architectural treasures, and the people are hospitable and generous, often going to incredible lengths to make visitors feel welcome. But added to this is a certain dynamic that can only be found in a country firmly in the grip of a drastic and fundamental overhaul. Change isn't just in the air; it's on the walls, on people's faces, in their attitudes, and up their noses. St. Petersburg combines the excitement of Saigon, Johannesburg, and Tangiers with a setting reminiscent of Venice, Paris, and Amsterdam. There are few places on the planet as interesting and complex as this.

There are of course some minor infrastructure difficulties involved in traveling to St. Petersburg. This is to be expected in a country where for years tourism was the domain of a single state-run tourist monopoly that specialized in herding people from sight to sight, making sure they understood the proper ideological meaning of every one of them. Fortunately the monopoly went out with the ideology and the effects of several years of market competition in the tourist industry are indeed palpable. .