Preevyet All,
We arrived at Helsinki late and tired already having decided that we would try and get some sleep at the airport as the flight to Riga left at 520am next day. So we caught the late bus to the Helsinki international airport to T2 which the bus driver was certain was the terminal that Baltic Air could be found. I weighed our bags and found that they were way over the 20kg limit. What could have added the extra weight? hmmm. Duty free on the ship from Stockholm. Lets check. 2kg soft lollies, 1kg of Toblerone, 1/2 bottle of Black Russian mix... I see the problem. So a quick shuffle of the bags and a few packs of lollies in our pockets and we were down to near 20kg but still a little over. An old couple sat near us and were fascinated by the repacking as if it was the first time they seen it happen. We checked the flight board and then found that the fight was definately not in T2 and walked down to T1 about 200m away taking note of any seating and found our flight on the board. We then backtracked to a seemingly quiet place and proceeded to attempt to get a few hours of sleep but a couple with a whining child brought that to an end at about 3am so we went back to T1 and waited for check in which started late anyway. They didn't even care about the bag weight which was a relief.
It wasn't long and we piled onto a bus and got to our aircraft. A fokker 50 propeller aircraft! There was no way our day packs were going to fit in the small overhead lockers so they had to go between our legs. It was a short flight of about 1hr so it didn't matter too much. Unfortunately the plane was delayed by 15min as it required de-icing which for us was a problem as we had a connecting flight at Riga with the same company to go to St Petersburg and there was only 30 min time without delays.
We arrived at Riga and only had a few minutes before our flight was called and we still had to pass through customs and get to the gate which was at the opposite end of the terminal. Others on the flight were running for connections which were either called or just about to be called so Baltic air need to fly out of helsinki a bit earlier. A bit of mission impossible for us and we were sure that we were going to miss the connection. There was no one at the customs queue when we arrived which was a relief but the customs officer was working in slow motion and taking time. Vanessa went through first and I said to go to the terminal and get them to wait if necessary but it wasn't required and we both made it just in time. Phew. We doubted whether our large packs had made it the the connecting plane but figured they would turn up some time during the day. Onto the bus and onto our next fokker 50. A longer flight but we were tired and slept and it wasn't long before we arrived at St Petersburg international airport, were amazed to find our large backpacks had arrived, passed through customs and relieved to find that our ride to the hostel had turned up to greet us and spoke english.
So yahoo we are in Russia!
St Petersburg looked pretty grimy and ugly on the trip to the hostel. We knew that there had not been much snow which was quite disappointing and the hostel was pretty basic but well located and we even got upgraded to a double room as there weren't many people staying at the moment.
So we decided it was time to walk around and find some of the sights of Saint Petersburg. It wasn't long before we found that there were either no street signs or street signs in Russian. I was glad that I had spent some time on the train learning the cyrillic alphabet as the map had street names in english.
We wandered around for a few hours and found the amazing Church of the Saviour on Split blood with it's colourful onion domes and was built on the spot where tzar Alexander II was murdered. A little more wandering to the river Neva (bolshaya neva). A chilling breeze and lack of sleep convinced us it was time to head back to the hostel.
Dosveedanya,
David and Vanessa
