Day 5
It is 9:30, or actually, 21:30, and the sun is just now hitting the horizon. It's incredible shades of burnt orange and red and is lighting up the clouds like nothing I have ever seen before. The clouds right on the horizon look like land in the distance. We are right under Russia and it is comfortably warm. This is not at all how I expected it to be like sailing across the Baltic sea.
Tomorrow we will be in St. Petersburg and I have just come from our first logistical pre-port. There we were given our green sheet, which is basically our lifeline of resources while we are in Russia. It gives us all of the emergency numbers and information on currency and transportation. In Russia, all of the draw bridges go up at 1:30am and are not lowered until 5:30. So if you end up on the wrong side of one, you are SOL until the morning.
Their currency is the ruble and the exchange rate is pretty fantastic. It's currently 32 rubles to the dollar. That means that while I have 2000 rubles in my pocket right now and feel really rich, it is only worth about 60 US dollars. Transactions in any other currency is forbidden so it is a good thing ATMs are now everywhere.
I am glad I have chosen to travel almost exclusively with SAS, mostly because of the language barrier. It will be interesting tomorrow when I have to figure out how to eat lunch and I can't understand the menu at all. Hopefully there will be pictures. It's a good thing I am not allergic to anything, so I can attempt to stomach anything set in front of me. Russia is known for their caviar; traveling is the time to try new things, right?
My current plan is to spend the day casually exploring with Dylan, my roommates boyfriend. The three of us are doing the same field program in the evening but she has a field lab during the day for class and so he and I each needed a travel buddy. We will probably just head right to the main street in St. Petersburg and possibly go to a museum. The biggest museum is the Hermitage. It has the largest collection of art in the world. If you were to spend 30 seconds looking at each piece it would take you 6 years to go through the whole thing. We don't have that much time, especially because we need to be back to the ship at least by 8 to meet up for our canal cruise.
I haven't decided what kind of souvenirs I want to get from Russia. Of course there are nesting dolls, and those awesome fur hats with the ear flaps. But I live in Florida and have absolutely no use for that sort of thing. Russia is also known for their vodka, and there are over 60 different brands that you can buy, but we can't bring that on the ship and it isn't worth shipping home. Hopefully I spontaneously discover something.
The weather is going to be beautiful and we dock at 8:00! Here we go!
