Mike and Sharon in Scandinavia and Russia

August 18-19: Copenhagen: We traveled Saturday-Sunday from Nashville to Detroit to Amsterdam to Copenhagen, with a few hours of layovers between each. The good news is that the weather was good throughout the trip and we did manage about four or five hours of sleep during the long haul from Detroit to Amsterdam. I sleep pretty well on planes if I have enough legroom, and in this case we paid the extra $80 to move to economy comfort seating on Delta. That little bit of extra legroom and more tilt to the seat can really help.

The problem with that flight was that it left Detroit in the early evening and got into Amsterdam at what would have been about 1 a.m. in Nashville. So our body clocks were all screwed up.

We finally reached Copenhagen at about 1:30 p.m. on Sunday. I was disappointed to retrieve my luggage and find that a compartment had been opened and some books I had brought along about Scandinavia were missing. Maybe just the result of sloppy checking by security or customs folks, not sure what happened. The weather was very warm and our very nice Sikh cab driver, Mr. Singh, gave us an overview of the city while driving us to our waterfront hotel, The Strand. "Waterfront" in Copenhagen can mean just about anywhere here because there is a harbor in the center of things and a canal every couple of blocks. Each canal is crammed with boats of every kind.

Our room was tiny, but the hotel is very nice and in a perfect place on the water. Of note is the fact that The Strand, part of a warehouse built in 1869, has beer taps built into the front desk. What it doesn't have is air conditioning. While it is hardly ever needed in this region, we happened to show up on the hottest day of the summer.

We decided to just sit on a bench in front of the hotel at first and just watch the activity. Things were happening everywhere you looked. Kids were diving off of sidewalls into the water, boats were everywhere. Kids were playing at a fun waterside park where they could be placed inside a plastic ball, have it pumped with air and then left to float and play on a pool. We watched a pair of idiots on a Sea Doo get the thing going at what looked like 50 mph and then wreck, sending them into the water as the Sea Doo hit a wall. No one appeared badly hurt. People were biking and walking everywhere you looked. In short, Copenhagen is a crazy and fun place on a Sunday afternoon.

We then went walking for a couple of hours, crossing the water at a nearby bridge and exploring the side across from our hotel. Copenhagen is absolutely beautiful - clean and fun. There are no high rise buildlings, so church steeples dominate the skyline.

We were tired and hungry, so we ate at a sidewalk cafe, where Sharon had fish and chips and I had lasagna in which the pasta was crispy (fried or baked, not sure which) and then stuffed in a way that made it look like a burrito. All was good, not terrific. Prices here are very high - beer is around $9 per glass and Diet Coke is $3.50.

We were exhausted after dinner and were in bed at about 7 p.m. I am back up at about 3 a.m. and writing away. Might take a day or two to adjust to the time differences, though neither of us is normally bothered by jet lag.

(A) Copenhagen-(b)Bergen-(C) Balestrand- (D) Flam- (E) Stockholm - (F) St. Petersburg

Some background on the city:: Copenhagen, derived from a word meaning “merchants’ landing,” has been attacked and occupied several times in recent centuries. Invaders included the British in the early 1800s, and the Germans during World Wars I and II. In more modern days, the Swedish city of Malmo, located across a channel from Copenhagen, has become part of Copenhagen’s metropolitan area.

The Copenhagen Concert Hall is the second-most expensively built concert hall in the world, second only to that of Los Angeles. There is also a huge jazz music presence in Copenhagen, caused by the influx of U.S. jazz artists to the area in the early 1960s. The influence has remained and the city has several jazz festivals each year.

The Stroget area is said to be a great place for free music and entertainment. Jugglers, musicians and other performers roam the area. The city has some renowned amusement parks, most notably the Tivoli Gardens, which has the oldest Ferris wheel and the oldest roller coaster in the world. We plan to go there on Monday.

August 20: Copenhagen: We went to breakfast around 8:45 after a rather fitful night's sleep. It was very hot in the room, and that, coupled with an early trip to bed, left us up in the wee hours of the morning before we fell back to sleep.

The breakfast, which was included in the price of the room, was great. They had all sorts of breads, cheese and meats. Soft boiled was the only egg offering, but they were good. Sharon enjoyed the duck pate', which I wouldn't eat for breakfast if my life depended on it. This is the land of the Danish pastry, though neither of us tried them. Their other breads were very good, however.

We embarked on a walk of about three hours after breakfast and saw parts of the city we missed on Sunday. Though it wasn't open (Wallyworld?), we saw the Tivoli area and some of its amusement rides. We feel like we walked much of the central Copenhagen area on both sides of the water over the past two days.

We had lunch at the Custom House near our hotel. As mentioned earlier, expensive food and drink is the norm here. The medium-size hamburger we split was $30. Good, but for $30? I saw another restaurant that was advertising its burgers for $20. What a deal.

The walking and lunch prompted a late afternoon nap to recharge us for our final night in town.

We awoke at about 5 and sat outside on the bench in front of the hotel. This is the ringside seat for activity along the waterfront, and things were picking up as work ended and more people were out boating, biking and hiking. The chatter here is about the fact that Denmark is seeing the hottest late August weather it has seen in 40 years, and people are enjoying the warmth in a land where there is little. There was a nice breeze today, so it wasn't too hot to be out.

We went walking again, though we were a bit sore from the hours of walking earlier. It took us a little over an hour before we settled on a place for dinner at a sidewalk cafe on a side street off the main square. It should be mentioned that renovation of old buildings is going on everywhere here, and the jackhammers don't stop after the sun goes down. So finding a quiet place for dinner took some searching.

Our restaurant choice, the Cafe Victor, was great once you got past the menu sticker shock. My five slices of lamb were about $65. But the food was terrific and we enjoyed the evening air.

We went back to the hotel around 10 and it didn't take long for us both to be off to sleep.

August 21: Copenhagen-Bergen-Balestrand: We had another great breakfast at the hotel and left for the airport around 10:15. Next destination: The fjords of Norway.

Our packed SAS flight made it to Bergen, Norway on time at around 1:30. It was about 2:15 by the time we gathered our luggage and secured our Volvo station wagon from Hertz. The ride from Bergen to Ballestrand, where we are staying for a couple of nights, was interesting and taxing. The trip takes you through about two dozen mountain tunnels, some more than five miles long. There are twists and turns and narrow areas where you dread passing trucks.

But the drive is also gorgeous, taking you by fjords, waterfalls and scenic lakes. The weather changed frequently, going from sunny to rainy every few minutes. We made a few wrong turns and finally arrived in Ballestrand around 7.

We watched from our hotel balcony as the rain thinned out over the lake and a rainbow appeared oon a mountain. Memorable scene.

We went to dinner at a nearby place called The Cider House around 9. This was great. The main dining room in an old cottage is a greenhouse where various herbs grow near the tables. Most of the fruit and vegetables they serve are from their surrounding small farm. Sharon had local place, a fish, and I had veal. Very good meal. Sharon struck up a conversation with a mother-daughter pair at the table next to us. Turned out the daughter went to Vanderbilt and lived on Wilson, which is the street across from our house. Rotiers Restaurant received a few minutes of discussion.

Cider House Restaurant

We checked our computers in the lobby of the Ballestrand Hotel, where we have WiFi access, and then we headed for bed.

August 22: Balestrand and touring the fjord: After coffee and breakfast, we walked around Balestrand for a while. Our favorite part of the walk was a visit to St. Olaf Church, a staved church built in the 1800s, and which still offers services in English on a regular basis. We eventually went to the docks to wait for the ferry to Mundal, a small town near the glacier on Sognefjord, the fjord that our hotel overlooks. The boat ride took about 90 minutes, and we were the only passengers on a very large car ferry aside from a family of three whose family roots were in Lebanon. Marianne, the youngest in the group, was celebrating her birthday. They were very nice people and we enjoyed talking with them during the trip. The male in the group, Robert, and I discussed everything from his business life in Saudi Arabia to American presidential politics.

The scenery was beautiful and the weather was perfect. Sunny, a bit breezy and about 70 degrees during the early part of the trip. There were waterfalls, colorful small homes and dramatic mountains that you only see in fjords. Some schools of dolphinsswam along side of us for part of the trip. We also saw several "hanging glaciers" that sit atop mountains but no longer connect to the water. As we approached Mundal and the nearby glaciers, the air turned noticeably cooler and we all zipped our jackets and prepared for colder weather. Sharon put on some gloves. The glacier we saw is the largest land-based glacier in Europe.

Once in Mundal, the other passengers took a bus to the glacier and we opted to stay in town and have lunch. We found a very cute older hotel being overseen today by a young Lithuanian woman. She was very cordial and fixed us a delicious fish soup made with fresh-caught fare from the local waters. I also had a ham and cheese salad made with what tasted and appeared to be locally grown vegetables.

Sharon rested on the outside deck of the hotel after lunch and I grabbed the camera and explored Mundal, which doesn't take long because it is a small village. The town is internationally known as a center for book sales. They are mostly selling used books, but I saw both new and used books for sale, and observed some from various countries. It seemed that every other building in the town had books for sale. One home had a bookshelf in the front yard with an honor system for payment. Attached to the shelf was a coin box and a sign that said, "Honesty."

We re-boarded the ship shortly before 4 and the weather switched almost immediately from pleasant to rainy. We were happy to have enjoyed so much of the day in good weather, though. The sights were still great going back, and we returned to our hotel to take a nap after the ship arrived back in Balestrand.

We enjoyed a very good dinner in the Bistro area of the historic Kviknes Hotel, which is easy walking distance from the hotel where we are staying. Both of us has sauteed trout, risotto mixed with chopped spinach and an assortment of root vegetables. Everything, including the bread, was delicious.

We saw our friends from the boat trip in the library area of the hotel, and visited with them for a few minutes before heading back to our hotel around 10:30.

August 23: Depart Balestrand and take a car ferry to Flam. Getting from Balestrand to Flam is a rather complicated and time consuming venture. The good news is that the sights between the two small towns are great.

We had breakfast at the Balestrand Hotel and loaded the Volvo for our travel day. We had a short drive to a ferry location and then took about a 15-minute ferry across a portion of Sognefjord. Then we had about a 90-minute drive to a second ferry boarding location.

We arrived almost two hours early for the ferry, for which we already had our ticket, so we went to a grocery store and bought some fresh-baked pretzels and a jar of dark mustard. We drove back to the place where the line forms for the ferry, and there still was hardly anyone there. So we took a quick trip down the road to see an old stave church. These distinctive vertically oriented Norwegian churches are very cute and welcoming.

In this case, however, about five tour buses arrived on the scene while we were there. We shot some pictures, walked around to see some old grave sites, and got the heck out of there. We arrived back in line for the ferry for the third time and were still first in line. But we knew those your buses were headed to the ferry next. Our prediction proved true, and the ferry was jammed with people when we left the dock.

Our two and a half hour ferry ride was dampened by some rain, but the ride was beautiful nonetheless. We traveled for a while on Sognefjord and then entered the Narrow Fjord, named for its very narrow passageway at some points through steep fjord walls on both sides. Very dramatic.

There were waterfalls of various sizes to be seen about every 10 minutes. We also enjoyed seeing very different sets of landscapes during the trip. One minute you would be seeing lush farm property and a minute or two later there was grey craggy rock and nothing else. I would say there was plenty more of the latter overall.

The reason we and everyone else is going to Flam is that it is the starting point for the Flam Railway, which is the steepest conventional railroad in Europe. You get on in Flam, ride it up the mountain to another small town called Myrdal, and then ride a different train back down to Flam. There are other options if you wish to take them - there are trains that go from Flam to Bergen and Oslo, too.

We decided that because of the rain, we would put the train ride off until tomorrow. We checked into our hotel, the Flamsbrygga. and rested for a while. We had looked forward to a view of a harbor-like area from our hotel balcony, but were dismayed to find a 3,700-passenger cruise ship docked 100 yards away from us.

The ship finally left a couple of hours later, allowing us to see the landscape. The most amazing thing about the ship's departure was the way in which a rainbow replaced the ship on the horizon just as it departed.

We had dinner at a microbrewery-restaurant next to our hotel. The downstairs are was jammed with beer-drinkers, so we opted to eat upstairs where it was quieter. I had a hamburger and Sharon had spare ribs. The food was so-so.

We were in bed by about 10 p.m.

August 24: Flam-Bergen-Stockholm:  Today was another travel-heavy day with plenty of great sights. But the trip on the Flam Railway was the highlight. We took the 8:30 train - the first of the day - and found plenty of room on the train due to the departure of the cruise ship.

The weather this morning was clearing toward sunny, with a temperature of about 60 when we got on the railway. We were in the last car. The train was built to help complete a spur connecting Bergen to other parts of Norway, and the rail line must have been an engineering challenge. There are 20 mountain tunnels between Flam and Myrdal, one of which makes a 180-degree turn inside the tunnel. It has a major bridge and some areas where it runs along the ledge of some steep cliffs.

I would not say riding the train is a scary experience - you feel quite safe. But it is a thrilling ride. About halfway through the trip, you come to a very large waterfall, and they stop the train so passengers can get off and take pictures.

We had a 15-minute wait once we got to Myrdal, and then we got on another train and went back down the mountain and by the same sights. It was just as thrilling the second time through.

We bought some Diet Cokes and rolls for lunch on the road and quickly embarked for Bergen, where we had to return the rental car to the airport before 2 to avoid extra charges. Though Flam is just 103 miles from Bergen, the trip takes about three and a half hours due to the complexity of the road challenges. There are plenty of mountain tunnels, many sharp turns and plenty of trucks and buses to slow things down.

The drive between the two places is beautiful, with fjords, mountains and lakes along the way. We also passed through some small towns.

We made it to the Bergen Airport with a few minutes to spare. Then we had a wait of four hours before our flight to Oslo, followed by a flight to Stockholm. The first flight was about an hour and the second one was 40 minutes. We had about an hour's layover in Oslo. One thing that amazed us is that we flew internationally and were in three airports and no one ever asked for a passport or even an ID. We just handed them a ticket and we were off.

The Stockholm airport is more than 30 miles from downtown, so we had a very long taxi ride to our hotel, The Stureplan. Our cab driver was from Tunisia, and Sharon conversed with him a bit.

The Stureplan is a very cool hotel that appears to be right in the middle of the Stockholm downtown night activity. We are near two large squares. The hotel was built in the 1800s, and our floor and our room are very attractive. There is a large central seating area when you get off on our floor. Next to that is a smaller parlor-like area. Our room has very high ceilings, an old chandelier, a big flat-screen TV and a nice bathroom.

We had dinner around 10 p.m. in the lobby of  a nearby hotel. The only food they had at that hour was cheese pie, salad and a roll. We took it, and it was good.

I finally got to sleep at about midnight.

August 25: Stockholm: I was up by 6, and began working to reconstruct a big portion of this blog that was lost yesterday when I tried to add to it using iPad. Not a good move. At one point, the entire blog disappeared.

I was able to get much of it back and then rewrote the accounts of the past couple of days. Sharon was up at about 8, and we were at breakfast at about 8:30. This hotel is really classy, both in terms of furnishings and service. The breakfast was quite good, with plenty of fresh bread, fruit, eggs, meats and cheeses on the buffet.

We decided after some discussion of the day's activities to take the "Hop On, Hop Off" boat tour of Stockholm. So we walked about three-fourths of a mile to the pier, bought our tickets and waited. And waited. And waited. The boat that was supposed to come by each stop every 20 minutes left us and a couple of dozen other people waiting about an hour. Further confusing things is the fact that there is more than one "Hop On, Hop Off" tour, but they are run by competing companies.

We were in line to demand a refund when the long-lost boat finally showed up, and we opted to get on. Once on board, we had a good experience with them. We decided to go to most of the stops the line makes around Stockholm's harbor. We listed to a taped and timed tour message in English as we made our way around. The info was solid and gave us some good background on how Stockholm's many islands are laid out and the role each played in city history.

We got off the boat at Gamla Stan, a very old section of the city that is very touristy and trendy today. There are several shops and restaurants on each block, and the neighborhood goes on for quite a distance.

We walked for about an hour and decided to eat at an outdoor garden-style restaurant that offered several different types of typical Swedish food. I had Swedish meatballs, and Sharon had baked char, a popular local fish. We both remarked about the humongous portions of mashed potatoes that come with these meals. "No one goes hungry," our server declared.

We walked back to our hotel, which was about a mile and a half away, and we both took naps. Sharon's was shorter than mine because she wanted to walk to a local island where there was a city garden, and then bike around the garden area. It was a beautiful day and she really enjoyed it. I slept a half hour longer than she did, and I spent the rest of my afternoon walking around the Stureplan neighborhood where our hotel is located.

Sharon and I had received a restaurant recommendation from dance friend and fellow Purdue alum Melanie Parks, who lived in Stockholm as part of her job for Skanska, a large Swedish-based construction company. The place was called the Tennestoppet, located about two miles from our hotel We had a please walk to the place and enjoyed sitting outside on a pleasant evening. I had fish ragout and Sharon had fried herring. All was great. We walked back to the hotel and were ready for bed.

August 26: Stockholm: For a pair that has been walking many miles a day while exploring, or sailing many hours a day to see fjords, today was a comparatively slow day. But it was also an important one for me, and for Sharon because she has been in the Pigott family for 36 years of her life.

The reason that things were slower overall was that we had rain - some of it quite heavy - for most of the day. This is not uncommon for Sweden in late August and we were very lucky to have had such a beautiful day on Saturday.

After another great breakfast at the Hotel Stureplan, we walked to the old Stadion, built in 1911-1912 to host the Olympic games. It was about a half mile from our hotel and it was a nice walk past some city parks and old buildings that pre-dated the Olympics coming to Stockholm. My Uncle Dick Piggott competed in the marathon here exactly 100 years ago this summer, and my brothers and sisters and I had a chance to meet him several times at his home in Medford, Mass., home of my dad and his family.

Uncle Dick was a good guy, and was a sort of family hero because he had been in the Olympics. I loved hearing him tell stories about his trip to Stockholm. Uncle Dick never went to college and was probably an apprentice electrician in Boston when a strong finish in the Boston Marathon put him on the team. I never heard anything to indicate that he traveled far from Boston the rest of his life. But being on a track team with Jim Thorpe and future-Gen. George Patton, and sailing to Sweden to march in the opening ceremonies and compete, made his life special.

I had been reading about the Stadion in advance of our trip. It was built specifically for the games, and is the oldest Olympic stadium still being used for any purpose. The Stockholm soccer team plays here, though that will soon move to a bigger stadium. And it is also used for concerts. But otherwise it is hardly open for anything.

Walking toward it at 9:30 n a Sunday, I had little hope that we could get inside. But as luck would have it, there was a national track meet going on and we talked our way in past a very friendly organizer for the track event. I told her we were there to see where my great uncle competed, and she smile and waved us through the gates. I felt some emotion entering that stadium, and imagined what it was like for my uncle.

We were delighted to see that the 100-year-old facility had been maintained to perfection. Flowers adorned the walkways and the track was beautiful. The stands and gates were as they were 100 years ago, and looked well-tended.

We walked around the stadium, looked at plaques from the Olympics and took in the sights. I shot a bunch of pictures which are in the slideshow on this site. Satisfied, we proudly walked out the gates, very happy to have gotten inside.

We walked for a few miles around Stockholm, a city that never disappoints when it comes to beauty and pedestrian friendliness. If you get to a crosswalk and the light is red, you can hit a button and green appears almost immediately. Bike lanes are wide and given great consideration in the traffic flow.

We returned to the Stureplan, our favorite hotel of the trip, and rested for a while. The rain had gotten heavy and steady, and while we would have loved to have been touring, we knew the museums and other indoor attractions were probably jammed with tourists.

Late in the afternoon, we went to a nearby restaurant, the Sture Haf, and had a tremendous fish dinner. I had fresh pollack in an unusual (to us) cream sauce filled with chopped hard-boiled eggs. Sharon had something called pike perch fried in butter. It came with onion rings and small white boiled potatoes. Stockholm is on the water, and the great fish was evidence of it. We tried each other's selections and proclaimed it one of our best meals of the trip.

We walked around an unexplored area of Stockholm for about 90 minutes more, and returned to the hotel at a relatively early hour - around 7. 

Both of us emailed and played computer games, watched Crazy Heart starring Jeff Bridges and went on to sleep. Busy travel day ahead.

(Note about Crazy Heart and Stockholm in general: I have yet to see a restaurant, bar or concert here that didn't feature American music. Motown is big, as is Johnny Cash. Even concerts in the park feature westernized music. TV commercials have pop songs in English. Almost everyone here speaks English, so the cultures are very intertwined.)

My great uncle's Olympic cap, photos and certificate from Sweden's king

Family Memento from 100 Years Ago

August 27: Stockholm-St. Petersburg, Russia:  How far is it from the world's nicest and best-run airport to one of the worst anywhere? 

For us, the flight from state-of-the-art Stockholm to badly run St. Petersburg was about 1:40. Stockholm's system, from fully automated baggage check in, to quick but thorough security, to great shops and restaurants, was superb. We have benefited greatly from a card that I received from American Express called the Priority Pass. It gets you into hundreds of private airport clubs around the world, regardless of what airline or class of air travel you are flying. Each has free food and drink, free wifi, and clean restrooms. There was one in Stockholm, and we took advantage of it.

We arrived in Russia to find there was no ground crew ready for our arrival. Then we learned that they didn't have a walkway from our plane into the terminal. Then there was just one bus available to carry passengers once they walked down the stairs a la 1960. So we had to wait quite a while on the plane for the next bus. But it didn't matter, because the line we chose for immigration took an hour and twenty minutes to clear anyway.

The silver lining to the cloud is that we were in line behind a younger Russian woman (30-something?) who took on the role of our adviser and protector. Her name was Csarina. When she heard we needed a ride to our hotel, she got on her cell phone and ordered a cab to be waiting at the time she estimated we would be through immigration. She gave us her contact info and told us to call her if we had any questions or problems while in St. Petersburg. And she answered many questions about the city, Russian customs and other issues we had. In short, she was an angel from nowhere.

We finally made it past a grumpy immigration person, whose line was twice as slow as all the others. (Booth number 17, if anyone is tuning in.) Csarina walked us to where our cab was waiting, and we said find goodbyes. Our cabbie was Gregorie, and he was as eager to please and play ambassador as Csarina had been.

Gregorie's English was hard to understand at times, but overall we communicated well by pointing and repeating words. He tried to give us a ride from the airport and city tour at the same time. Sharon and I were both touched by his efforts to make us feel welcome. While most signs along the way were in Russian, we would occasionally pass a McDonald's golden arches or a Cadillac dealership, and Gregorie was proud to point them out. Gregorie was probably around 30 years old, has a nine-month-old son and his wife works as a manager for CitiBank. He said he had amassed a business with five cabs and he looked forward to soon visiting his grandfather, who lives in Boston.

We arrived at our hotel, The Nevsky Moika 5, around 5:30.  The hotel itself is certainly nothing special. Having stayed in the lap of luxury in Stockholm, we went to what we would consider a two-star dorm room. But the positives were the helpful staff and the great location - five minutes from the Church of the Precious Blood (or Spilled Blood as it is sometimes called.) The name belies a beautiful church, one of the world's most recognizable. Also within a few minutes walk is the historic Hermitage. And just about everything else you would like to see in central St. Petersburg.

We walked for quite a while after our check-in at the hotel, and ended up having dinner at a jazz club which occasionally features live jazz musicians. We really didn't intend to eat there, but a very sweet and eager young server named Tanya and her look-alike sister insisted that we give it a try. We were glad we did. I had spaghetti carbonara and Sharon had fish. Both were excellent, and we didn't leave a drop of food or sauce on the plates. We listened to American jazz and watched old-time jazz movies from the 1940s as we ate.

Our Hotel in St. Petersburg

August 28: St. Petersburg. We woke up at about 8:30 after having gotten to bed around midnight. St. Petersburg is two hours later than Scandinavia, so we are now on a time that is 10 hours later than Nashville's. I think.

We had breakfast at the hotel, and the whole setting and arrangement was a setback from what we had experienced in our  posh hotel in Stockholm. Here, there were two dining tables, and two bags of bread next to a toaster, a tray of meat and cheese, a bowl of hard-boiled eggs and a few other items. The best feature was a coffee machine that ground and made fresh coffee at the touch of a button. 

As mentioned earlier, the hotel's best feature is its location, and we aren't here to sit in a hotel. We walked back to the Church of the Precious Blood and waited for a hop-on, hop-off bus to arrive. That took about 10 minutes and then we were on a very large double-decker red bus that took us around to see city sights. It was very fun and relaxing on a day with perfect weather.

We got off at the Hermitage, a well-known Russian museum commissioned by the Russian royalty. I had the equivalent of a pigs-in-a blanket, and we both had corn on the cob at a museum-side stand. Birds were all over us and anyone else with bird-worthy food.

There was a duo playing guitar and singing near out table, and I was amused by the fact that a guy was trying to cut the grass while they were playing. I shot this pic of the poor pickers, and attached it to Facebook with the caption, "and the audience cried out for mower."

We capped off our day of sightseeing by having dinner at the restaurant next to our hotel. The decor is terrific, but the food wasn't as good as we had hoped. I had lamb kebab and it was very tough. We have been conversing at our hotel with a woman named Charlotte, who lives in London, She was seated at the next table in the restaurant. We enjoyed our discussions with her. She has traveled to several interesting and unusual places.

August 29: More Sightseeing in St. Petersburg:  We were up around 8:30 and met Charlotte, also known as Charlie) in the breakfast room. I had a ham and cheese sandwich. We had all decided the evening before to take a hydrofoil boat to Peterhof, an unbelievable place full of gardens, homes and palaces built by Peter the Great (Spender.)

The place was built in the early 1700s and has all sorts of interesting features. The thing that impressed me the most about it is the elaborate fountains, all of which are run without electricity or outside power. They are all propelled by gravity. Hard to believe when you see them.

The hydrofoil ride took about 30 minutes each way, and we spent about three hours at the complex, so much of our day was devoted to Peterhof. We went to lunch at the jazz place again around 3 p.m., and Tanya was our great and enthusiastic server again. Both of us had the spaghetti carbonara after finding mine so good the other day.

Sharon and Tanya

We sat outside at the restaurant and enjoyed its spectacular view of the Church of the Precious Blood. Of note about the church, aside from its stunning appearance, is the fact that couples parade throughout the day to a bridge near the church to do their weddings. They don't appear to go into the church, but instead have the ceremony on the bridge. Sharon saw three weddings there on Tuesday and we saw two more today.

Wedding on the bridge

We thoroughly enjoyed every second of our trip. Wish we had more time in each place, but we felt like we got a chance to tour and sample each of the destinations in four countries with four different languages and four different currencies. What a cultural experience.

August 30: Going Home: We met some of the kindest and most considerate people anywhere during our visit to Russia, and we also met some people who were clearly scamming us. Our final hours in Russia were a reminder of this. Our first encounter of the day involved some collusion between our hotel desk clerk and the cab driver. Our fare ended up being more than double what it was coming with Gregorie from the airport to the hotel a few days earlier. Today we paid the cab driver by credit card through the hotel and it looks like they both benefitted from the deal.

The next encounter was about an hour later when Sharon paid for our breakfast at the "American Cafe" in St. Petersburg airport with 200-plus rubles she had left over, and then asked to pay the rest of the breakfast tab with a credit card. The receipt arrived at our table and showed they had given Sharon just 175 rubles in credit and put the rest on the credit card. In short, they ripped off by a a few bucks. We let the server know we were unhappy, and she shrugged and said the cashier counted the money. In other words, tough shit.

It dawned on us that we could have had free food, drink and coffee at the Priority Pass lounge at St. Petersburg, so we headed there for the remaining hour of our wait for the plane. We cut it close, barely making the gate as the loading of the plane was closing down. We underestimated the distance from the club to the gate, which was a very long way.

Our first flight of the day was from St. Petersburg to Moscow aboard Aeroflot, the Russian airline. The flight attendants looked like throwbacks to 1960, dressed in unforms with little orange caps, bright orange scarves and matching skirts and blouses. The jackets had little hammers and sickles on each sleeve. (This is a Comunist symbol that we didn't see anywhere else during our visit.) The flight attendants were very nice, as was the ticket counter person who gave us exit row seats to accomodate a request for more legroom.

We had about an hour and a half in Moscow to get to our Delta flight, and that transfer went fine. We had bulkhead seats on the 10-hour ride, so the legroom issue was solved. We had upgraded to the Priority Comfort seating option for a few dollars more to get those seats.

We had a long layover of about five hours in New York before our plane left for Nashville. We spent much of that time relaxing in the Delta lounge near our gate. That final flight to Nashville seemed to take forever, although it really was about two hours. We got to Nashville around 6 p.m., capping off almost 24 hours of trravel and airport waiting.