Thursday (St. Petersburg here we come)

Today the only thing on our agenda is travel to St. Petersburg. We are going by train and have almost an entire car to ourselves. We have so much luggage, however, that it is pretty crowded. I’m sitting at a bulkhead seat and in front of me are two huge red suitcases. Beside them is another large black suitcase and there’s a small suitcase on the seat beside me and my bag is under the seat. All the overhead luggage areas are crammed with suitcases and most of the under-seat spaces are also filled up. The trip is supposed to take 8 or 9 hours so I bought a small Sudoku book at the train station.

Before we left, I walked down the block from our hotel and found a bank that was open and exchanged some US to Rubles. The exchange rate is 25 to 1 so for $26 I got over 600 Rubles. I also got some nice coins for my collection as well.

We arrived without incident in St. Petersburg at 7 PM and made it safely to our hotel. The hotel is interesting to say the least. After walking through a dark alley you enter a plain metal door that leads to several flights of stairs. Part way up the stairs there is a small room with a desk that is the hotel lobby. The elevator did not work so you can imagine 22 people with all our luggage hauling it up the stairs to the lobby and then further up to our respective rooms. As always, my room was on the top floor. The room has wireless Internet access (after you pay for it) which is a plus although I had very poor success staying connected.