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Jul 2, 2010 - Tallinn, Estonia to St. Petersburg, Russia

There is very little to say about this day, since it was mostly consumed with bus travel — about 10 hours from start to finish. We left our hotel in Tallinn and got to the border town of Narva in good time for a group lunch in a small tavern. But it took one of our busses 2 hours and 40 minutes to cross the border, nearly all that time waiting in the hot bus, some of the time without air conditioning. Surprisingly, most of the time was consumed waiting for the Estonian authorities to process us. But the Russians were a bit of a problem, too. For both busses we had to take all our luggage off the bus (and for many of us, have it sniffed by dogs), and walk it through customs control. Mercifully, they didn't ask us to open our bags.

Then came a harrowing, 3-hour ride over roads crowded with suicidal Russian drivers, until we arrived at the Petro Palace Hotel in St. Petersburg in time for our 8:30 group dinner. Afterwards many of us went out to explore the city a bit or take the 45-minute cruise on the Neva River. (As this is being written, it's 11:30 p.m., and one can still read a newspaper in the street.)