Dec 27th Traveling to Russia

We were on the bus again early Sunday morning to go to the airport and catch our flight to St. Petersburg. It was much warmer in Prague then when we were last there. As the flight landed in Russia, the entire plane burst into applause and JP commented that “this must be an unusual occurrence.” The landscape outside was bleak and snowy…quite a contrast to what we just left in the Czech Republic. And they do like to smoke here also. The terminal was filled with cigarette smoke. It was kind of refreshing to get out in the cold for a reprieve. There is about 2 feet of snow on the ground here in St. Petersburg. This is the most snow they have had for about 4 years. We are lucky to even be able to get around. They haven’t cleared the streets very well and cars are buried on the sides of the roads. We stopped at the hotel to check in and then the buses (we have 2 here) took us to dinner. It was about a half hour to the restaurant and we passed many beautiful buildings and famous sites. Almost all the buildings are huge here in comparison to the other cities we have been in. The transformation away from Communism in the past 20 years must have been mind blowing. Everything seems pretty modern. But, we have been told that St. Petersburg is a very European city compared to the rest of Russia. Our guide, Galina, told us that Peter the Great designed this city after Amsterdam, which he admired very much. He moved the capital from Moscow to here, because he did not like Moscow. Then when Lenin came in to power, he moved it back to Moscow where it still remains. We had a wonderful dinner at the Chaikovsky restaurant and enjoyed traditional Russian food….cabbage and pork. BUT for the first time in recent memory (according to Alan Lewis) we got to have ice cream instead of apple strudel!