9-26-2013 St. Petersburg

9/26/2013 St. Petersburg

LAT post

Took a morning train from Helsinki to St. Petersburg.  Like all European trains it was wonderful, smooth and fast.  Trip was very pleasant.  We were checked twice for passports, one by the Finnish and once by the Russians.   Patsy and I had our first Russian beer and it was pretty good.  We arrived in St. Petersburg around 3:00 the train ride was 3 hours.  The traffic from the train station to where our boat is ...was about 45-50 minutes.  The boat is nice and bigger than our last one.  We have a nice room and all our travel mates are close. We had an orientation meeting, dinner than back to the room to get ready for an early wake
up.

LMR post

2 hour train trip from Helsinki to St. Petersburg.  A bit bumpy, but O k!  Has two passport checks one in each country.  Viking rep met us at train and we took a bus to the ship- cabin is a typical Viking size, but have a nice deck with enough space for two chairs.  Another ship is parked beside us as I soften the case with Viking.  Our person Jeremiah asked that we sit in his section #2.  5pm meeting for basic information including tipping suggestions.  We signed up for some optional tours.  Exchanged our dollars to rubles on the train and we are counting on Patsy to keep all this straight.  Dinner was in the main dining room - the Neva.  I am not too wild about the beef stroganoff, but the salad bar and Caesar wraps were good.  Need to leave early in the morning as we have preassigned tour for the Hermitage - followed by the ballet Swan Lake!