yesterday was an amazing day. it started out not so good with our bus breaking down on the way to the hermitage. thankfully there was a metro station about a 15 minute walk away and about 9 of us decided to go to the museum anyway. we got to look at the grounds and some of the art of the hermitage (or winter palace if you will) for about 2 or 2.5 hours so i'll definitely be going back atleast two more times. it is a remarkable place, though, and i can't imagine how it must have looked in the eighteenth century. then we went out for some authentic russian food and found a nice little restaurant off nevsky. they were friendly people, the prices weren't bad, and the food was excellent. the big hit of the day/night, however, was the free concert hosted by the city of st. petersburg. the city is hosting the world economic conference at the moment and is also celebrating thewhite nights, so they decided to give a free concert in palace square staring roger waters, the bassist of pink floyd. i would guess there was between 80,000 and 100,000 people in the square which was so cool to see because this is where a lot of history has taken place. revolts started there and a tsar was killed not very far from there so it was cool to be a part of the show. the music was excellent, it was almost all old stuff from pink floyd's glory days, but the message of the show was very much anti-bush. i know russia doesn't support the u.s. war in iraq but it was weird that a state sponsored show was pretty anti-bush. the riot police was all over the place too but everything stayed calm. overall it was a very enjoyable experience. seeing dylan and a member of pink floyd within four days was pretty sweet. russia is pretty sweet.