Walter Russell Mead finally got around to seeing St. Petersburg, and it knocked his socks off. Excerpt:

If travel is an important part of your life, this is a city that you need to see. Few cities in the world express ideas with the clarity and force of St. Petersburg; few are so brave or so beautiful as this astonishing anomaly and miracle, this triumph of vision and hope, this stage for political theater in the far reaches of the north.

I very much hope to return.

I must go there one day.