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thought why not get a couple of those to take us on a tour of the town? We could give them a day's work and a nice tip and it would be good for everyone. Dream on.
We got off the ship, hired two pedicab drivers who promised to give us a tour. They pedaled us out the gate, his driver turned left, mine turned right and that's the last we saw of each other. Mine took me to a really rough part of town, got to a square filled with tough-looking guys and stopped. He then informed me it would cost twice as much money to get back to the ship. I looked around, decided I was out gunned, and paid up. I found out later that Walt's driver did the same thing. Terrible, right? Not really, because it became another story to tell on stage.
There were lots of hustles. They had an Egyptian variation at the pyramids there guys offered camel rides for five dollars. Not bad, right? It turned out it was five dollars to get on, ten dollars to get off. In Barcelona they warned us guys would spill something on your shirt and then pick your pocket as they apologized and wiped it off. Lots of scams, but I avoided the hustles and loved walking around exotic places.
St. Petersburg, Russia, is one of the great walking cities in the world and one with an amazing history. We first went there before the Iron Curtain fell, when Russia was very grim and communist and part of every tour was a small, elegant department store in the middle of town. The Russians called it "The Museum" because no normal Russian could afford anything there. For them it was look, but don't touch.
If you got on a bus, the body odor was bad and tourists thought the Russians were unhygienic. The truth was that they couldn't get soap. This was in the communist days when Russians would carry string bags and if they saw a line, they'd get in it. It didn't matter what was being sold, they knew they needed it, and a sliver of soap was very precious. It's hard to stay clean without soap.
The big ship's tour in St. Petersburg was to the Hermitage Museum, which housed the Tzar's collection of art. It was amazing, with rooms full of Rembrandts, Van Goghs and every other famous artist. We entertainers could get free tours by riding on the tour buses and counting passengers when they got on and off. It only took me two years to realize it was easier to count the empty seats. Duh.
But at the Hermitage, it was a people zoo. Loads of buses from different ships and people wandering in all directions. There was no way people were going to find the right bus so we just assumed they found one of ours and made it back. They always did.
If you spent a minute looking at every piece of art in that Museum it would take something like two years to get through. Dave Coleman, my Seattle drummer