Safe in St. Petersburg

Marty and I arrived without incident to St. Petersburg airport.  I was a bit nervous going into passport control, because I didn't know what to expect.

Only one person is permitted in the "cube" at a time.  Once inside, there was a woman behind a wall with a glass window, sort of like a bank teller, but the window was high so that you could only see her from the nose up. Sort of like "Kilroy was here", but her nose wasn't nearly as large, and she had hair.

When we had received the visa I had been surprised to find that the "mean" photo that I had taken was not in the Visa.  I thought that perhaps it had just been too scary to print, I mean, it scared me when I looked at.  But I soon realized that there was a purpose behind the photo not being printed.

It was quite obvious to me that my photo and information were available electronically, because the young woman scrutinized me carefully, looked over at what I think was a computer screen, looked back at me, and back again at the screen. Then, she finally stamped my passport and slid it back through the slit in the window. Not a single word passed between us. I thought about saying "thank you" in Russian, but figured that I shouldn't push my luck.

We picked up our luggage and walked through customs and quickly found our driver holding up a sign with my name printed in English.  He introduced himself Nikolay. What a great guy! On the way to our hotel, he highlighted many of the hisotrical buildings and monuments of St. Petersburg. 

At one point, he asked us if it was difficult for us to obtain a Russian visa, because he had heard stories from people indicating that the process was complicated. See!  I wasn't exaggerating!

I am so glad that I decided to arrange the ride through the hotel. The group of men from Scotland had also missed the reservation deadline for the shuttle, but decided that they would just pick up a taxi at the airport. (My husband was guilty of the same line of thinking until I decided otherwise.) Well, the Scots found themselves dropped off on some random street with luggage in hand, when one of them mentioned that they weren't at the hotel, and the driver loaded them back up into the van and finally got them to their destination. They admitted that they were a bit worried for a few minutes.

Did I need that kind of stress? I think not!