St Petersburg, day 2

We walk to the waterfront again in the morning. In the daylight we can see how shabby all the buildings are. It was once forbidden to take photographs of the bridges; they were considered military targets. Nobody seems to care now. We go in to a featureless shabby building. It turns out to be the bank; there’s a guard behind a screen in the outer lobby. Everything looks typically Soviet—faded painted official notices, dim lighting, institutional color paintwork, bored clerks.