Today we checked out of the Red House hostel and moved to the Baby Lemonade to officially start our Vodka Train journey. On checkin we received a surprise when we were told we'd have a private room, Score! The Baby Lemonade is an incredible hostel and a huge step up from our last nights accomodation. We had a few hours before our initial briefing so we decided to try out Pyshki, an old fashioned cafe from the Soviet era. It servers a traditional greasy donut, instant coffee and thats it! The donuts tasted exactly like grandma used to make. However, the best part was that they were only 25 cents each. Proving once again that Russia is a really cheap place to eat. We decided to have 3 each.
After that we strolled around the city for a while before returning to the hostel for our pre-train briefing. There we met Vadim, our local 'honcho' for the St Petersburg section of the trip. We also got acquainted with our group consisting of Nikki (dutch), Iva (dutch), Tobey (aussie), Paul and Sara (Irish couple). Everyone was super friendly which is great as we'll be sleeping in very confined spaces on the train for the next 3 weeks. Vadim took us out on the town to a few local bars so we could all get acquainted. After dinner and a few drinks (for everyone except Mike) we returned to the hostel. Time for some zzzzs before another big day tomorrow.
