If you’ve only got 24 hours in St. Petersburg, here are the things you absolutely have to do!
1. Witness the murder of an opposition journalist in beautiful Palace Square: Locals will tell you that there’s no experience more authentically Russian than heading down to Palace Square and seeing one of Vladimir Putin’s journalistic enemies lethally poisoned with a hidden needle. Try getting there just after sundown, when you’re most likely to catch government assassins flocking to the dark spaces between streetlamps to wait for their targets.
2. See the world’s only fountain: Ever see water spraying into the air? Nope? Well, that’s not surprising, because St. Petersburg is home to the world’s only fountain! At two feet wide and one foot tall, and with three active jets of water, this incredible marvel of engineering should be your first stop on your trip, as odds are you’re going to want to spend a lot of time there.
3. Bleed in all the spots that Rasputin bled: From sidewalks to pubs to the ceilings of cathedrals, there are 412 spots in St. Petersburg where you can bleed right where the legendary Russian mystic dripped, gushed, sprayed, and spurted his vital fluids. It’s pretty easy to find a Rasputin blood map being sold on the street. Just be sure to eat plenty of red meat for breakfast and stay hydrated so you don’t run out of blood.
4. Visit the State Russian Museum to confirm you hate all art: You already know you hate Western art museums because most of the art is just bad paintings of baby Jesus. But by spending just a few hours in the Russian Museum, you can confirm that all art on the planet is dog shit.
5. Marvel at the architectural beauty of St. Isaac’s Cathedral being destroyed by Laika the Soviet space dog plummeting to Earth from orbit: Every day, right as the sun sets, the body of Laika the Soviet space dog torpedoes out of the sky, crashes into the golden dome of St. Isaac’s Cathedral, and is then quickly launched into space again. You don’t have to be religious to appreciate St. Isaac’s celebrated neoclassical structure being obliterated by the space dog’s fiery corpse.
