St. Petersburg, Round Two
Against all odds, we survived our Halloween party and made it to our long vacation. It honestly couldn’t have come at a better time! I was dying this past week. All I wanted was to get the heck out of Moscow. I didn’t care about the Halloween party- I just wanted to escape.
After work Friday evening, we rushed to the train station. Literally rushed- we nearly missed our train. Overall, the train ride was nice and generally pretty uneventful. I watched 21 Jump Street, hung out with friends, and went to bed.
We arrived, exhausted in St. Petersburg at 5:00 a.m. We went to the Peter and Paul Fortress, which was pretty cool. It wasn’t at all what I thought it would be. The coolest part of the fortress was that it was on the beach.
Around this time in the day, my phone started getting really weird. It kept inexplicably dying. I would take a picture and then it would completely shut down and say that I had no battery. I was terrified that my phone was broken on the first day of vacation. As it turned out, my phone was just really cold, which had sucked the battery life out of it. Once I warmed up my phone and deleted some stuff, it worked just fine. Technology, you guys. It’s amazing.
By this point in the day, we had seen everything we were going to see, so we just wandered around the city. We had big dreams of eating somewhere new since we had eaten at the same places each day we were in St. Pete’s before. We ended up eating Subway. Yes, we really branched out. It was fine though. We were hungry and Subway was right there.
This second visit to St. Petersburg was really short-lived. We didn’t have time to do much, other than casually walk through the streets before it was time to take our ferry to Finland.
A Ferry to Finland, Please
After our day in St. Petersburg, we made our way to the boat dock, where we loaded the night ferry to Helsinki. It was a pretty cool setup. Jess, Jordan, Paul, and I were all in one room. It was set up just like a cruise ship, where there are pull-out beds above the two main beds. The boat was very small and honestly, a little ghetto, but it was fun. I enjoyed it.
Almost immediately after arriving and getting settled in our cabin, I passed out on my bed. I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I just didn’t have the energy to get up and explore the ship.
After napping, Jess, Paul, and I hit up the bar to go get some non-alcoholic drinks. I know, so rebellious. While technically, we are old enough to drink in Europe, we chose not to. I had a piña colada that was really good. We all hung out in our room and chatted for several hours. It was great. There wasn’t much to see on the ship, but it was fun hanging out with my friends.
It was nice to take a moment to relax since the process of getting to this ferry- going from school in Moscow to the train, to St. Petersburg, to the ferry was so stressful. I think we all needed to take some time to enjoy the little moments like this.
Now, I realize that this post didn’t cover much, but stick it out with me. There is a whole lot to see in the next one, when we get to Helsinki, Finland.
All my love,
Madison
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