Change of Plan

We had a lie in, which is not an easy thing to do in an eight-bed dorm. A short city tour took up most of the day.
The old city was gorgeous, narrow streets, castles and cobbled roads.

Then we headed back to the hostel for noodles and a lesson in how strange some travellers really can be. We had a crash course from a Kiwi girl in a shell suit that talked all the way through “I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry”. She was to become the first freak of many.

After months of planning we changed our route on day one. Everyone we spoke to said Finland-Helsinki is a bit of a waist of time, 6 hours on a ferry for not a lot of anything. So we decided to go to St Petersburg instead. The only problem is that our visas was for a border entry to Moscow, not St Pete’s, and we’d heard all sorts of horror stories about the Russian’s throwing people out of the country for having incorrect visas. We decided to play dumb at the border, not hard when you really don’t know what you’re doing. Worst case we have to miss St Pete’s and talk our way onto a Moscow train. Or spend the next 2 weeks avoiding showers in a Russian prison!