Travel Day to Russia

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We are off.......the long trip over to Russia

We are making the long trek from Houston to St. Petersburg today. We flew out early this morning to New York, JFK. From here (after a 5 hour wait) we take a FinnAir flight to St. Petersburg with about an hour layover in Helsinki. It's about 9 hours to Helsinki and less than an hour gate to gate to St. Petersburg from there.

I have to say I was amazed at how easy it was to get a Russian visa, compared with the awful time I had last year getting a marriage visa from Great Britain. We have to carry along a visitor permit with our visa and we're supposed to check in with local authorities in each town. We're assuming the boat crew takes care of that for all us since it's a tour so I'm not very concerned. I am a little bit miffed about what I've heard about not going off by ourselves away from our tour guide. I like to explore a little so hopefully that will be a little more relaxed with us.

I'm taking my new iPad so I can learn to play Angry Birds that my brother got me into. I'm anxious to see how well the 3G reception is between St. Petersburg and Moscow. So while I'm sure I can send this blog while in St. Petersburg and in Moscow, not sure what the reception will be like on the boat between the 2 cities.

I'm using a distribution list from our wedding blog, so if you don't want to receive these for this trip, just send me a note. No problem.

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