Today we rose at 4:30 am for a ten-minute taxi ride to the Moscowsky Railway Station in St Petersburg, where we boarded train 33A for the 7 hour trip toTallinn, Estonia. It is quite light at that time of day, but the hot fine weather has turned to cloud and occasional rain.
 |
| The streets were quiet as we boarded our taxi at 5:15 am;. |
This is the first time we've travelled by train in a compartment. We had two compartments between the four of us, each with a pair of seats which also served as beds if you wanted to sleep. This train had come overnight from Moscow, so there would have been people in other compartments who had slept through the night there.
 |
| Our private compartment! Simple but comfortable. |
 |
| The whole trip was over flat country, so there was not much scenery to write home about. |
On the train the staff were all russian and spoke little or no English. There was a dining car, run by a couple of tough women, where ordering food and drink was achieved by pointing at things on the menu and a fair amount of talking to each other without understanding a word. We did successfully order an omelette each for breakfast, with a cup of coffee. When that was over we returned to our compartment to find they had delivered a free breakfast to all of us! It was a simple combo of porridge, orange juice, and some plastic-wrapped buns with a little cheese and fruit.
Later one of the ladies came through to collect our plates, etc, and things got a bit shoutey when Sue tried to hang on to her metal spoon to eat her yoghurt with. The lady tried to grab it, and Sue resisted, before we worked out she was trying to tell us there was a plastic spoon in the breakfast pack! She got the metal spoon. A reminder for all that talking more loudly does not magically make people understand a foreign language better.
 |
| Made it to Tallinn! The weather there was sunny and warm again. |
The train stopped at the Russia / Estonia border for over an hour, as uniformed staff came through to check our passports, ask us if we had any weapons or illegal drugs, and to let the sniffer dogs check out us and our baggage. One dog thought Sue had something in her bag, but it was a false alarm.
In Tallinn the hotel was just a ten minute walk from the station, so we wheeled our bags there on foot. Thanks to Google it was no problem to locate, and they didn't seem to mind us turning up a little early (about 2 pm).
 |
| Our hotel, on the right. The round building was a "horse mill" |
The "horse mill" beside the hotel once housed a large horse-driven machine (mill) to make flour, which was useful especially if the city was under seige.
