Okay! Here is the story of our last day in St. Petersburg and our bus trip!
I got up at 10ish and started packing up my stuff. I didn't bother worrying about weight this time because we were taking a bus and there was no limit. But, my God, it was heavy! I'm going to have to be very creative in order to get all my gifts back home to everyone! It can be done, though, I'm convinced of that.
At noon, Anatoli came to the hostel. We had to check out of our rooms by then, but we still left all our luggage at the hostel so we didn't have to carry it around town. We walked across a bridge and came to the lane of museums again. We decided to go to the zoological museum, because it was only $2 and we had 7 hours to kill! It was pretty cool inside. There were stuffed animals from every corner of the planet. It was intense. I always get kind of depressed in these kinds of museums, because all the animals had to die for us to look at them! I like to tell myself that most of them died of natural causes, haha. There was a blue whale skeleton, a panda, all kinds of birds and insects, pretty much anything you can think of. The big draw was that they had one of the only actual wooly mammoth bodies in the world! It was found in Siberia and is now displayed in the museum. The trunk was broken off, and Anatoli told us that a dog on the expedition had chewed it up! I bet that would have been terrible to see after finding something so crazy-rare!
After we wandered around the zoological museum for an hour and a half, we went out on the streets to wander! We were like a group of vagabonds looking for things to do. We went to a traditional Russian restaurant to eat lunch. It was pretty good, I had fried potatoes with chicken in a skillet-y thing, but the portion was really small. Also a weird thing I noticed is that in Russia (and now Estonia), the wait-staff brings the food as it's ready and won't wait for everyone's dishes to be served. Once 3/4ths of us had our food, the others told us to go ahead, so we did! But, Julie's food didn't come until like 15 minutes later, so we were already done! I don't really know why they do that, because it makes everything so awkward, and everyone gets impatient at some point.
After lunch, we went to check if the summer gardens were open; they were! The summer gardens were started when St. Petersburg was founded, so it was their birthday too! They were packed with people. Peter I's first summer residence was in the gardens, and they have always been public domain. They were super-green, with not many flowers, but a few fountains and a carp pond (that was original to 1703!). We moseyed around a while, but the crowd was huge and oppressive, so we took off for bigger and better things: Donuts!
Anatoli told us about this Russian donut place, so we decided we had to go. They were soooooooo good. They were exactly like beignets except they were round with a hole in the middle rather than pillow-shaped. They were every bit as good, and were served the same way! They were so cheap too, like 12 Rubles for one donut (about 40 cents). We had our fill, and by then it was time to go back to the hostel to meet our bus that took us to the bus (ha).
We took our last metro ride to get home. It was sad! The metro is SO NICE and clean and easy to navigate. It made visiting the city super easy. I'll miss it!
We got back the hostel, lugged our luggage downstairs (whew!) and waved goodbye! It was sad too. We had made a lot of friends there and learned a lot about Russian culture that we couldn't have if we had stayed in a traditional hotel.
So the bus dropped us off at the big-bus station, and we were 2 hours early! Luckily there was a cute little park there, so we sat, played Fool, and walked around the area. I went to a Russian McDonalds! It was exactly the same as the ones everywhere, which was a little surprising, a little disappointing, and a little comforting all at the same time. haha.
So, our bus came and, man, was it swanky! It was a double decker, and each seat had much more leg room than the buses we've taken on band trips (I was steeling myself for another one of THOSE nights). The top floor, front row seats weren't taken, so a few of us went up there. It was super cool! Kind of scary because we were set a little in front of the driver, so it always felt like we were going to hit stuff.
We rode in style for about 3 hours enjoying the view of the Russian countryside before we came to the Russian exit customs. Not many countries have exit customs, but Russia does. They want to make sure that you're not smuggling out things or running from the law. It was uncomfortable because they obviously singled out our Chinese students. They asked them specifically for their passports and visas. We were a little offended, until Anatoli explained that because they're Chinese citizens, they need visas to go to Estonia, and they wanted to check their visas to make sure they could get INTO Estonia, because if they couldn't, they would have to go back to Russia. There was still some racial profiling that went on, because they asked them for their passports at first just based on looks, but I guess I understand why they had to do it.
At this point it was 1am, and I was groggy. After we made it out through Russia's border (Yay!) we traveled across no-man's-land to the Estonian border to go through THEIR customs. Anatoli said that it would be better because they don't make you get off and take your luggage in, but they did for us! We all got off, had to open all our bags, and present our passports. Everything was fine, though, and I got an Estonian stamp in my passport! Yay!
After we made it past the border, I wasn't really sleepy because I had taken just long enough a nap before the border to make me energized. I sat back up in the front seat ("The pilot's seat" as Anatoli said) and watch the sun come up. It was GORGEOUS! There were patches of fog low to the ground, and we were above them looking down into the fields. I took some pictures, but they were through the dirty bus window, so don't expect much. It was so beautiful.
After a half hour or so, we saw something on the road ahead. At first I thought it was a deer, but it was a MOOSE!!!! I've been dying to see one for years, and it happened so suddenly! It was a cow, and she ran across the road and away before I could get out my camera! It was awesome! Moose!!
After that, I was in a weird state between sleeping and waking until we arrived in Tallinn. Inna was waiting for us (she had left the previous day with her father). We took the trolley-thing two stops with our luggage to our hotel and dragged the bags up 3 flights of stairs.
Luckily, all of our hotel rooms were ready even though we were 6 hours earlier than the normal check-in. I was so happy! Our room is really nice compared to St. Petersburg, and we have our own bathroom with shower! So I took full advantage of that and then went to sleep directly. We were only allowed to sleep for 3 hours, and then Anatoli came to collect us.
So far today we haven't done much, but I'll tell you about it and what Julie and I see when we walk around later this evening to get dinner. I hope I can upload pictures soon, but right now it's being really uncooperative!
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