“I hope to discover that these were here when you visited Annie [Annie Brassey]. I’ve yet to learn more of your time in St Petersburg, but I think I can assume there wasn’t a burlesque club opposite. The rivers would have been here though, palaces and churches…
It is a welcome sanctuary from Nevsky Prospect [the Botanic Gardens]. Tour completed, spoken entirely in Russian, I am none the wiser but enjoyed access to the temperate green houses. The warmth and luscious greenery of the inside contrasted starkly with the lacklustre and bitter cold of outside.
…Collected small stone and three acorns. Admission ticket stitched into diary and leaf that fell from tree as I was writing.”