Today I had a flight to St Petersburg at 6:30pm and my goal during the day was to just relax.

My feet were killing me from all the walking the last few days and I just wanted to take the day to catch up with my blogging and make sure I knew how to get to my hostel when I arrived in St Petersburg.

I stayed in bed until 10:30 and only then got up because I had to checkout by 11:00.

After washing up and storing my backpack I went into the common room.  The plan was to just lazily sit there for 5 hours in front of my computer.

The hostel here has had a family vibe to it because most of the people staying here have been here for awhile.  Some have been here for months.  Anyway, I’ve always felt like an outsider here and I guess it didn’t help that in the room were the two people I shooed out of my room yesterday as they were trying to hook up.

Anyway I didn’t really want to hang out in that room all day so I went with plan B.

Go to the mall by the Kremlin, grab some lunch and sit there for a few hours.

I decided to take the subway one stop instead of walking for 15 minutes.  It was cold as the sky was grey (as every other day) and it was windy (also, as every other day).  Also, like I said, my feet were killing me.

Now I’ve gotten really good at the subway here and I feel like I have a good handle on it.  It was probably this overconfidence that led me to actually taking an hour to take a simple 5 minute subway ride.

I went to what I thought was the right station only to exit it and see on my Google Map (thank you, GPS) that I was quite a bit away from the Kremlin.

I took some time to look up on my phone the correct station and I went back in, bought another metro ticket and took a different line to that station.

Yup, it was closer…but still not quite there.

In fact, the walk from that station ended up being as long as the walk I would have taken directly from my hostel.

So, yeah, that didn’t work out quite the way I planned it…

Anyway, around 1pm I was finally at the food court.  I got my daily consumption of sausage and dumplings and sat down at one of the tables.

As I ate I opened up my netbook and typed away at yesterdays’ blog.  I’ve actually fallen behind on my blogging almost every day this week and, boy, is it tough to get it caught up sometimes.

By 3pm it was time to head back to the hostel and get ready to depart for the airport.

Even though the subway was right there, I decided to walk back ’cause, you know, why tempt fate?

After a quick goodbye I was on my way to the airport.

I was flying out of the same airport I arrived at (there are 3 airports in Moscow) so I just reversed the directions I had taken to get into town a few days ago.

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My subway riding was back on track and by 4:30 I arrived at the airport.

After going through a couple of security checks at the airport I boarded the plane around 7pm.  The boarding was a half hour late and then we sat on the tarmac for a good amount of time delaying the flight an hour.

Now, given that the flight is only an hour and a half, that hour delay adds up.  In fact, from the time I left my hostel in Moscow to the time I finally reached my new hostel in St Petersburg almost 8 hours had passed.

So, while the flight is nice and short you tend to forget about the 2 hours you arrive before your flight and then the hour transit to and from the airports each way.

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Anyway, I arrived in St Petersburg at just after 9:00 and, after getting lost a couple of times, I made it to my hostel just before 11pm.

By now, outside of a bag of chips at the airport, the last time I ate was about 9 hours earlier and I was tired and starving.

The girl at the front desk explained everything about the hostel including showing me places on the map to go to.

All I wanted to do was put my bags down and head out to get some food so I just sat there and listened to her nodding my head back and forth.

Finally I headed out into the cold Russian night to find some food – not such an easy task at 11:30 at night.  I finally found a kebab place down the street and settled for that.

Whew, what a day.  I didn’t do anything and I’m exhausted!

Travel days are just like that.

Anyway, I’m here in St Petersburg for a few days – time to have some fun…

USSR Trip 2015, Trip Journal

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