making Mary's photos work

  Customs was very easy and done all electronically with our passports.  Walked out and there stood our guardian angel for the next week…Tatiana…a guide with Russian Adventures that we found on the Internet last fall.  Her mother taught English and she is married to a British man … speaks beautiful English and is a fountain of knowledge….a walking guidebook who seems to anticipate our every need. 

before arriving at 6 pm in St. Petersburg, Russia.

She drove with us to the hotel, helped us to the new hotel…same chain…when we discovered they’d had a problem so had switched us to a different hotel…better location actually than the scheduled hotel…..and then stayed with us another two plus hours to get our bodies used to the time change.  After half an hour to settle into the hotel, we walked over to the Sacred Blood Cathedral or also known as The Church on the Spilled Blood and into the parks that surround that and the Hermitage buildings and several palaces.  While walking Tatiana told us the history of everything that we were seeing.  She gave us a cell phone before leaving us at our hotel so that we could contact her in case of problems and then we   It was like I was home…the connection was very clear.  With eleven hours difference from here to California…we’ll call family on the east coast in the evening and those in California in the morning.  Works best for their time zones.

connected to the Internet here in the hotel and I used my smartphone for a telephone call over the Internet using International Skype service.

Finally to sleep by 11:30 pm…we both slept soundly until about 7 am.  Waiting to go down the breakfast here in the hotel and then Tatiana will be arriving to take us to the first of two trips to the Hermitage Museums today.