Mikey and Janna's Visit

I miss my friends a lot here, so it was very nice to have Mikey, also an old roomate, and his wife, Janna here visiting on their cruise. Their family is quite large so they were able to get a bus to take them around the city. On Monday, it was great. I got to see the insides of the two churches that I'd been around a million times but hadn't yet paid to go see inside. I was reminded how much they rip off the tourists here. They'll charge you twice the Russian price, and then they charge you if you want to take any pictures. Luckily most of the time I can get away with being a Russian student (half the foreign student price) by showing my SPB State ID. My strategy is to say as little as possible. Here's a little picture of them outside the Church of Spilled Blood (where Alexander II was assassinated, they built a pretty church).
Yesterday they went to Moscow for the day and then today they went to the Hermitage. I met up with them at the SPB Artillery Museum, and we were then shuttled to a firing range on Vasilievsky Island that is used for army training and where they bring cruise tourists. I am sure if such a thing existed in the States we would have to sign about 30 waiver forms before even going inside. We got to shoot a Kalashnikov (AK-47) semi-automatic rifle and a Makarov pistol. Never in a million years would I have put this on a list of things I wanted to do in St. Pete, and of all people Mikey and Janna's family would have been the last I would have thought would want to do it. They claim they thought it would be more like laser tag. In any case, if you're going to shoot a gun for the first time, why not make it a Russian one?