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June 1, 2006
Transit II - The Great Race
10 pm 5/30 St. Petersburg Time. Get call from airport transfer. Traffic in St. Petersburg is awful, they want to move their pickup from 2 pm to noon. This is my only chance to see the Hermitage. We compromise on 1 pm.
7:00 am St. Petersburg Time. Wake up. Pack.
10:30 am. Go to Hermitage. For piece of mind, decide to look at it as a palace, not an art collection. If I had to really look at the art, I'd start crying in frustration.
Noon. Return to hotel and check out.
1 pm. Car picks me up.
2:06 pm - get to Pulkovo II. Pass through initial security, but one is not allowed to check in until 2 hours before flight, so I get to sit in the airport for the hour I could have used to see more of the Hermitage.
3:10 pm. Flight check in. Visit the palatial Pulkovo Lounge for cheesy potato chips and second hand smoke.
4:30 pm. Chaotic security screening and pat-down.
5:10 pm BA 0879 takes off on time.
5:30 pm GMT - BA 0879 lands ten minutes early without any circling over Heathrow.
5:43 pm - Through Passport Control
5:50 pm Baggage Claim
5:54 pm at Heathrow Express
6:02 pm HEX arrives at Terminal 1
6:17 pm HEX arrives at Paddington
6:25 pm Cab to Cumberland Hotel, Marble Arch
6:40 pm Check in at hotel
6:55 pm Marble Arch Tube
7:10 pm Holborn Tube
Walk to Covent Garden - arrive at 7:21 pm.
The dash cost £23. £14.50 for HEX, £7 for the cab, £1.50 for the tube (I am glad I saved my Oyster card from my last trip!) The ticket itself (a standing place because I wasn't sure I would make it) only cost £9. I have to say it was all worth it. I woke up in Russia. I went to sleep in London. I was at the Hermitage and Covent Garden. My body had no idea what time it is, and I was so tired during Act III I might as well have hallucinated purple bats. The cosmos may have taken pity, because a couple left only a few minutes into the prologue directly in front of me and I slipped into their seats at the interval and sat for the rest of the performance.
The embarrassing thing to admit is a palpable relief to be in familiar London, where I know the language, the transit system and the theater. Some of it is my mood, some of it is the actual performance, which taken in full beat anything I saw at the Mariinsky for quality - but I think that's the luck of the draw, not the position of the two companies. The Mariinsky was having an undistinguished weekend, and the Royal was working at its best.
Posted by Leigh Witchel at June 1, 2006 12:16 AM
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