AT home and all is well

Well, we were up and about at 3:00 AM for an early flight out of St. Petersburg, and arrived in our home at 7:00 PM the same day.  Doesn't sound too bad, does it?

In fact 7:00 PM our time translates to 3:00 AM Saturday, so we were literally on the road for 24 hours. I did get a good night's rest, but it always takes a few days for the body to get back to local time.  

Here you see a statue that we spotted in Alexandrovsky Park  on our last evening in St. Petersburg.  I have no idea who the man is, but he does appear to be thinking about something.  Perhaps he's wondering where he put his keys?

In this park there is an area that features miniature St. Petersburg scale models of city landmarks.  The idea came from Alexei Miller, the President of Gazprom, the state gas and oil company, who is from St. Petersburg.  

I wanted to share a couple of the miniatures with you: 

The Church of our Savior of the Spilled Blood:

SS. Peter & Paul Church at the Fortress

St. Isaac's, the 4th largest church in the world:

The admiralty

The Hermitage:

Mikailhovsky Palace:

If they sound familiar, it's because I was lucky to be able to see everyone of these and, if you kept up with my blogs, then you read about them during my adventures.

I certainly think that I made the most of the experience because I don't think I could have done much more in four days!  

There was one damper on the trip, though.  We were tricked by a "sly dog" as the hotel concierge called him in an e-mail that she returned to me.

We were leaving at 4:00 am via taxi that we had set up and paid for at the hotel the day prior to our leaving.  We asked the concierge if our taxi was outside, and he peeked out the window and nodded his head.

So, we headed out the door where a man in a white taxi popped out and asked if we were going to the airport.  I do have to admit that we were skeptical, because the man who had picked us up from the airport had been driving an unmarked car and this one was marked with a Taxi sign on the roof.

The driver wanted to take us to the International airport Petrograd #1, but Marty thought it was Petrograd #2.  The driver insisted that we needed to go to #1.  We asked him if the hotel had set up the ride with him and he said yes.  We asked him if he had been paid by the hotel  and he said yes.

He drove us to the Petrograd #1 airport, and when Marty went to give him a tip, he began to yell in a loud voice that we owed him 1500 Rubles. (what we had already paid the hotel).  He was making a commotion that was really quite upsetting.  I told the man that we had paid the hotel.  He told us that he was a city taxi, not the hotel taxi.  I reminded him that he told us that the hotel had paid him.  He, once again, told us that he was a city taxi, not a hotel taxi.  So, we gave him the rest of the rubles that we had, plus a $20.00 bill, which brought the amount to 1500, as he had requested.

We entered the airport, went to information, and were told that we were at the wrong airport.  We needed to take a taxi to the other airport.  So, we headed out to find a taxi when a man came up to us and asked if we needed to go to the other airport.  We said yes, but told him we had no Russian Rubles.  He was happy to take $20.00.  (which, by the way, I read that was illegal for anyone to take dollars or euros in Russia, so that should tell you something.)

In any event, we ended up at the right airport for our departure, but you can imagine how upsetting this whole experience was.  I e-mailed the reception desk at the hotel to tell them what had happened because I wanted them to prevent this in the future.  (plus....I didn't want that guy to dupe anyone else at that hotel.....let's just say I felt the need to get even).  The young lady was mortified by what had happened, and took total responsibility.  She appreciated the e-mail, and said that in the future, they will handle the matter differently.

So, we didn't escape the country without incident.   But what's more important is that we did get to the airport, and didn't have any issues going through security.  They appeared to be far more concerned about our arrival than they did about our leaving.

And, I'm very grateful that we didn't fly on Lufthansa, as they decided to go on strike on Thursday, and our visa distinctly stated that we needed to be out of the country on Friday!  I don't even want to think about what that hassle would have entailed!

So, for now, I'll be having a rest from gallivanting......hope you enjoyed the travels.