theatres, open-air stages, and
various cafe-chantant amusements. These resorts are at their gayest in
the early hours of the morning, till 4 A.M., when the company becomes
somewhat varied, and as the guide-books sagely remark, "Gentlemen had
better leave their ladies at the hotel."

These places are prettily laid out, and in the afternoon and early part
of the evening serve to pass a pleasant hour or two in the summer. Dress
clothes are not generally worn when visiting them.

In the town the two best ones are the Aquarium and the Ermitage Sad (Sad
is Russian for garden), not the same as the Ermitage Restaurant above
mentioned. Admission to gardens, 50 kopeks.

The Yar and the Strelna are favourite restaurant late-evening resorts
near the Petrovski Park, a short drive out. The Yar is open in the
summer and winter, but the Strelna in the winter only.

St. Petersburg

St. Petersburg has nominally three first-class restaurants, viz., the
Bear (L'Ours) on the Bolschaya Kononschaya; the Restaurant de Paris,
known as Cubat's, on the Bolschaya Marskaya; and Donon's on the Moika
Canal. All of them are good. Donon's has an excellent cellar and
supplies a good dinner if ordered in advance. The price of the set meals
is very reasonable, about 2 roubles or 4s. 4d. per head; but the profits
are made on the wines, which are ridiculously expensive (owing to the
enormous duties). For instance, a bottle of _vin ordinaire_ costs 4
roubles 50 kopeks, or 9s. 8d., and no bottle of dry champagne can be had
for less than 10 roubles or 21s. 8d.; a whisky and soda is charged 1
rouble 50 kopeks, and in some places 2 roubles; a half bottle of wine is
always charged 50 kopeks more than the actual half bottle price.

The Hotel de France has a luncheon at 75 kopeks, or 1s. 6d., which is
very popular with the business community of St. Petersburg, and it is
crowded from 12.30 to 2 o'clock. The food is not high class but of a
good bourgeois description, and the place is kept by a Belgian named
Renault. It is one of the best hotels in St. Petersburg, and its
situation is suited to the purpose; but, as a matter of fact, there is
absolutely no first-class hotel either in St. Petersburg or Moscow, and
sanitation is a factor that has not yet penetrated into the Russian
intellect. A man who eats oysters in Russia, eats his own damnation, and
at a high price in both senses; they are both costly and poisonous in a
town where typhoid is easily contracte