The Palace Buzz

Here she goes again Gracie, a dwarf kangaroo from the thirty-sixth universe, is skipping across the cosmos to her dream destination: St. Petersburg, Russia. She's traveling with Gibson, a Maine coon cat whose life she saved when he was unceremoniously dumped in front of a Pennsylvania corn field.Expectations and reality quickly collide. What she expected to find was a city of wintery white nights, a city dotted with a hundred islands linked by dozens of imposing bridges, all book-ended by majestic sculptures cast in bronze.She expected to feast her eyes on historic buildings splashed with pink, yellow and blue pastels.Instead, she finds herself back in the 18th century, in Russia's Imperial Golden Age. This is not the city I expected, she laments as she stands bewildered near the entrance to the city's center of activity, the perpetually busy post office.Then, when Empress Catherine arrives in her royal carriage and points a bejeweled finger at the ever-so-handsome Gibson, and declares: I want that cat...the fun begins.