St. Petersburg
07.24.2006
Ok so as a followup to my previous post here are the details on our journey from the US to St. Petersburg.
The flight from LAX to D.C. Was pretty uneventfull. I slept most of the way. From Dulles to Frankfurt we transferd over to Luftansa and had been upgraded to Business finally after pestering them for the last few months. Good thing too cause it was nice! The seats were mechanical and adjusted into various positions even almost completely horizontal.
We landed in Frankfurt sometime in the early morning hours. We walked around the airport to shake off all the sitting we had been doing. Then we came upon a very odd and very European sight. Scattered throughout the terminal hallways were smoking stations. These stations had powerful suction fans that pulled in about 50% of the smoke allowing the passerby to enjoy the other 50% of the sweet small. The really funny part was there was a sign on the station advertising a cigarette company and in print underneith was the text "Smoking Kills". Perfect.
We got on our last flight from Frankfurt to St. Petersburg. Another Luftansa flight that was primarely empty. When we landed in St. Petersburg we had to clear passport control and customs before we met up with our Russian sponsor and Vern, our guide for Elbrus.
We arrived at the same time as another couple and were taken back to our hotel, the "Moscow Hotel". The romm overall is ok. The one thing that stands out are the bed spreads. Very scarry. We immediately took those off and shoved them into a drawer. 
After a short nap we met the entire climbing team in the lobby for dinner which was in a subterranian level building. For dinner we were served some sort of pork smothered in I think a mushroom sauce.
After dinner a few of us decided to hit the town and check out the nightlife. We figured the "bar" was written as "gap". So we found a few "gaps" and people watched from the sidewalk tables. Getting to the "city center" was pretty comical. Forget about trying to decipher the alphabet and the subway signage. After hopping on the first subway and then wondering around the underground multi-level subway tunnels we poped out right in the city center area we were looking for. 
At this time it was about 10pm and it was still light. Because we are so far north it stays light very late during the summer. We only had about 5 hours of darkness with the sun rising at about 3 am.
Today we are going to take a tour of the city and The Hermatage.
That's all for now.
- excuse spelling. Not so easy from a blackberry at the back of a bumpy bus.
Posted by adoti 11:25 PM Comments (1)
