Добро
пожаловать на наш первый blog из России. Если у вас есть молотка это затем покинуть следующее сообщение для нас на blog - “Love those White Nights”.
 
Firstly let's complete yesterday's activities. We went into the old town and had a group dinner with half the tour at one restaurant and half at another one nearby. The food was excellent and afterwards there was a short skit put on in the restaurant. Our group of 14 had to all get in behind the bar to make room for the skit, which was a sword fight between 2 men (in medieval dress) over a damsel who did not appear too distressed. The sword fight was fast, furious and fun but it seems the wrong guy won as the damsel slapped the winner around a bit – hmmm. She did look worth fighting over though! Our guide then asked Bruce to tell the group about the location of the bus and the time it would be leaving. He was in the middle of doing this by playing on our Swedish guide's accent when, you guessed it, he realised she was standing behind him. They are getting to know Bruce already, as no one warned him. :-)
 
Now on to today. Our journey started very early with a 0530 wake up call. As we set off for the Russian border we were reminded that the immigration process could take anywhere from 2-3 hours. As it turned out we had 2½ hours driving to the border, 2½ hours going through immigration and 2½ hours driving from the border to St. Petersburg. We also lost an hour for a time zone change – they have 11 time zones here.
 
Again we were on flat land for the entire trip. On the way we were given our visa application forms for Belarussia (Belarus). There were 42 questions on it including the number of our travel insurance policy. Apparently we would be sold one at the border if we did not have one.
Guess what – we all have one!
 
We knew when we were approaching the border as there was a queue of trucks for about 2kms.. Luckily we did not have to queue behind them or we would still be there. Passing through the Estonian border consisted of a border guard collecting our passports, taking them away for stamping and then returning them via the guide. Took about 15 minutes for 41 people to get cleared. There was soon to be a hiccup as were approaching Russian immigration. Our guide asked a woman in a traffic control kiosk if we could have some extra immigration forms. She got a very sharp answer and as a result we had to move the bus into the middle of the road so other (local) buses and some other traffic could go through before us. She then kept us there for another 10 minutes.
 
After this queue we were moved to another queue where again we had to wait while more local buses were allowed through ahead of us. It is common knowledge that they have priority as they are quicker to process for some reason. Eventually we got to the front and had to get off the bus and collect our bags. Once we got inside the building and the doors locked behind us, we were individually processed by 2 delightful (not) women. We have no idea why we had to take our bags in as the was no obvious checking that we each had a bag and there was no xray process. We helped the driver store the bags into the bus and set of for St. Petersburg. Not so fast, 50 metres down the road we came across another checkpoint. After the final piece of paper was handed over we bumped our way down the highway for a km only to be signalled to pull over by a policeman on the side of the road. Don't know what happened there but it must have been hot work as we saw him walk back to his van and pour a bottle of water over his head. We thought we had left the 600 year old cobble roads behind in Estonia but they were with us for at least another hour and a half.
 
The suburbs of St. Petersburg were not that great but the city started to grow on us as we got further into it. Arriving at the hotel we were told that they did not have enough rooms for all of us – 4 short. They had to double up some of the rooms and couple of the guys who normally had their own rooms had to share. They were quite accommodating until they went to their room and saw their king size bed. I am not sure which one of them was the fastest to get down to reception and get our guide to sort it out. Our room was initially not ready so they changed it and we are quite happy.
 
After settling in we had to meet downstairs at 6pm for a glass of champagne and a dinner of mashed potatoes, stewed vegetables and a choice (not a word I think we will be using often) of fish or pork. The main course was preceeded by a salad and for desert we had something
similar to cheesecake. To be fair we had to be quick as we had another appointment for a river/canal cruise of the city.

The canal cruise was excellent. St. Petersburg is called the Venice of Russia and rightly so. It is also called the cultural centre of Russia. The old palaces, buildings and churches (mainly Russian Orthodox) were charming to say the least. Could have spent many more hours out there. At the beginning of our trip a couple of young boys got our attention on the first of the many low bridges we went under. We waved back and when we got to the next bridge there they were again. This continued for the rest of the trip – they must have run about 10 km. They were of course rewarded by most of us for their efforts when we got off. I will put some pictures of the buildings/churches in this blog but cannot remember their names. Hopefully we will see some of them again on our day trips and then get their names written down.