‘Sweet and bubbly’ is not limited to champagne. There are a lot of sodas and sparkling waters that could fit.
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Okay, today’s fixation is the “goosebumps related to a spiritual place or practice.” For the sake of not going crazy, I’m going to assume the other ideas are largely correct—a big and potentially quite wrong assumption—which leaves this one in St. Petersburg.
So what are some hidden, spiritually related places that might give me goosebumps?
There’s the secret room in the basement of the Yusupov Palace where Rasputin was given a final meal before he was shot (for the first time—as we know, that didn’t finish the job).
There’s Petrikirche, a church that the Soviets turned into a swimming pool, which was then turned back into a church, complete with mold damage and secret undercroft.
There’s Peter the Great’s Kunstkammer, to which he supposedly attracted visitors with offers of free alcohol. (This might be more the “sweet and bubbly” clue, but it’s also definitely goosebumps.)
And then there’s this tiny statue of a little finch that’s just too cute not to include.
I guess I lean toward Yusupov Palace or Petrikirche by a little bit, but the clue is not determinate: it’s broad enough that it’s tough to eliminate possibilities.
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@Eaves is likely to pop in today or tomorrow, and it might be worthwhile to “review the bidding” on the latest set of Port’s images. This is just my perspective on the discussion, so I am likely biased—please add on other thoughts or dissents so @Eaves can get the full set of opinions. (I promise I’m trying not to monopolize. 
)
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“sweet and bubbly”: Likely the Paris Catacombs, but could be many dark spots near snack bars.
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“goosebumps”: Tough, but my guess is the Petrikirche in St. Petersburg, but I have low confidence in that. Not many places fit all of the criteria: goosebumps, spiritual place/practice, and secret.
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“the painter lady with the monobrow”: This is almost certainly Frida Kahlo’s secret room in the Casa Azul outside Mexico City.
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“reflection” and “mosaic/painting”: I think the World Trade Center in Montréal is a decent guess for this, and the entrance to the Underground City below it.
Please have at these: I have no pride of authorship, and just want to put them all in one place for discussion.
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You’ve done a lot of research and if its wishful thinking to make the links you have, then Ports reaction/update should hopefully correct us.
Everything you’ve posted looks logical. Given I’ve never been to any of these places, we have to rely on what we can lookup, you’ve made it a lot further down the rabbit hole than I have, and it looks sound.
All in one post is great, it’ll give Eaves a quick ref and should we venture back to this thread in the future(something we’re totally not doing now 
), summary posts are very helpful 
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Okay, so yes. The most recent senses Port felt are connected to Mexico City and St. Petersburg. She also has faint connections to Montreal and Paris, but they’re not as vivid at the moment.
Port has been able to piece together more (the sweet and bubbly drink is sometimes orange or sometimes mango, but the person will drink it every day after leaving the secret place they spend their time). By focusing on those specific cities, they’ve come into slightly more focus for her.
Also?
Yuri is feeling something connecting all four of the constellation cities.
Leylines.
Artificial and faint, but there. “Artificial” meaning they aren’t natural leylines, but instead connections that grew into or became leylines because of some intrinsic connection. Like Lauren’s leylines.
Port and Yuri are using their powers together to try to figure this out, but it’s also revealing more about how adept abilities work now, or rather, how they don’t. It’s not at all like how it used to be, and it’s challenging to hold on to what they sense or see for too long. They’re trying not to overdo it by taxing themselves, or the new age’s magic.
So, to recap, Port’s focus, for now, is on Mexico City and St. Petersburg. There’s something in these places (as well as Montreal and Paris), which create a series of artificial leylines between the four locations.
Yuri can sense them now that you directed her attention to them.
Port sees a person in each of these cities visiting a secret place, possibly daily but has trouble seeing them when they’re in the actual secret place.
The person in Mexico City sees Frida Kahlo on their way to or from the secret place. They always have a soda after their time in the secret place. Port also heard kids or teenagers playing a sport for a moment, but she wasn’t sure what it was.
The person in St. Petersburg will have goosebumps connected to a religious or spiritual place. The secret place there is hidden by a painting or mosaic. And that person will take a moment to contemplate their reflection in a long body of water with stone on either side.
If we can better pinpoint these locations, Yuri and Port can figure out who these people are, what’s in the “secret places”, and maybe even get a better idea of how magic works now.
No pressure or anything.
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Ok I’m terrible at looking for secret places because googling “secret places Mexico City” unsurprisingly just brings me to a lot of touristy sites, but I have found the general area I think we can start looking in.
I found the Frida Kahlo Museum, or The Blue House, very close to a park that seems to be pretty soccer-centric (Parque Deportivo – explaining the sport noises).
There’s also a juice shop on the same street as The Blue House.
I’ll keep looking!
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Nice! That’s a great find. I’m trying to narrow down on the St. Petersburg clues …
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For the record I never wanted to see these 4 cities again. I spent at least a week staring at maps of them in the third assessment and never figured out a thing.
But I still have my notes.
Church of the Savior on Blood in St Petersburg is on the Mokya River which is a long body of water lined by stone from the pictures I’ve found.
It’s filled with mosaics. But I can’t find any evidence of a hidden area anywhere in the Church. But then that may be because it’s…hidden? Not sure. I’ll keep looking.
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Yup.
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I can totally believe that. Thanks for pointing out this church—I’ve been missing that the clue says “stone on either side,” not “a stone on either side.” So I’ve been looking for reflecting pools, not rivers with stone embankments.
But just for fun, there’s an icon in the church (scroll to bottom) that predicts important dates in Russian history by having numbers appear on it. In the meantime, I’m looking for other hidden rooms in there, like small chapels.
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One argument: the iconostasis hiding the sanctuary from the nave is mosaic-covered. The area behind it wouldn’t be secret, per se, but definitely hidden, and supposedly only priests are allowed behind it.
I’ve look at some of the other big churches along the same canal/river (Our Lady of Kazan and the St. Nicholas Naval Cathedral) and only see some evidence of paintings and few mosaics. Savior on the Blood has mosaics in spades.
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I promise I’ll shut up soon—here’s one more possibility here: there’s a restaurant with a beer garden called Comedor Lucerna with the mural below painted on the side:
I haven’t looked for sports or “secret places” nearby, so I still think the Casa Azul is the better guidepost, but this may be worth investigating.
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I think this may be the Frida that our mystery person sees.
And I found another thing that could match our old Obregón’s Requiem clue not too far away!
And it looks like there’s a splash pad in view of the monument, which could explain the sound of kids.
Edit: All that said, I just looked at the map Wyvern put up, and La Fragata happened to be on my radar for a different clue… (wasn’t super certain on it though)
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They’ve haunted me since the assessment, tbh…
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These look like solid leads, Mounties. I’ll take them back to the team and follow up tomorrow when I’ll be back in town. Again. I am SO looking forward to solar and satellite at Lion’s Heart, which is looking more and more imminent.
One thing… the secret places? Yuri isn’t sure, but she says they feel special, almost spiritual.
Like… shrines.
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I might be taking the shrines thing too literally (and giving more information than we need, since we already have solid leads!), but working on that particular lead, I discovered that in the 1970s, Mexica artifacts and structures were found under and around the Metropolitan Cathedral, including something described as a “monolith” (reminds me of Catherine’s jaunt around NYC, and the ley lines we discovered there). These structures were eventually found to be part of the Templo Mayor, a huge ancient Mexica temple. Excavations are apparently ongoing, so not only is a lot of this secretive to begin with, there are still secrets being discovered now.
As you can see in this map, I also found a boarding house fairly close by, called Frida Kahlo. The boarding house has a huge mural of Frida on its side.
There are a few juice stands between this boarding house and the museum/cathedral, and just a block away from the boarding house is a park with a playground and playing space.
[spoiler]Let me know if this is too much info or anything, I have a lot of tabs open about Mexico City right now.[/spoiler]
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If @Wyvern is going after Mexico City, I’ll go after St. Petersburg, but I’m not so hot with the maps (and I 
you guys but you don’t need to see all of the tabs I have open in a screenshot 
), so I’ll make do.
I admit, it’s tough for me to move off my last guess, which is behind the iconostasis in Savior on the Blood—it’s already a spiritual space, it’s an area that’s hidden by mosaic, and there is a river outside between banks of stone where one could catch a reflection.
Our Lady of Kazan is also a candidate. There is a famous icon there that might be hidden, though I doubt it’s a place where someone would go, more like just a safe.
I’ve searched on “hidden shrine” and have come up with nothing (and Savior on the Blood almost always comes up as the top result, but that might just be my algorithm).
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Great, great work, Mounties.
You nailed St. Petersburg (the secret space is behind a mosaic in the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood), and you were only a few blocks away from the “shrine” hidden in Mexico City. It turns out it’s in the basement of a convenience store called Abarrotes la Fragata about a block from the La Fragata sports park.
Port and Yuri found that the more they focused on those areas, the more they both saw with their respective powers. Faint, but similar to what they used to experience. Port can see that the “attendant” of the Mexico City shrine goes every day and is a grandmother (she’s the one with the sweet tooth), and the attendant in St. Petersburg goes once or twice a week, to watch over the contents of the shrine.
Here’s the thing, Port and Yuri found that if they meditated together, their powers became better focused. Not amplified or made more substantial, but they found that their abilities were melding into a clearer vision for both of them. That is not how adepts used to work. Yuri says that they’re “much less powerful, but more synergistic.” She didn’t know who Captain Planet was, so she didn’t quite get “With your powers combined…” but hey.
So, as I said, great work, they’re going to take a short break (this process takes a lot out of them) and then start focusing on Paris and Montreal.
One last thing—
You know the shrines? And the objects in them that are creating artificial leylines? Well, according to Port, the attendants believe what they’re protecting are the actual icons of Elainnor. So. Yeah.
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“The fathers called it the “old fort.” Ilya had imagined it as gray and dusty, lined with garrisons of soldiers, and holes for shooting arrows from, like a castle in a story.”
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Well, I certainly hope that there’s time to rectify that.
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