We had a plane to catch about lunch time but our first objective, after breakfast, was to do a bit of shopping at the markets. We bought one of the items we wanted and then worked out how much we needed for the other plus our accommodation so I knew how many more Euros I needed to extract from the friendly local ATM. This enabled us to buy the other souvenir we needed on our way to the bus station to catch the regular #2 bus to the airport. Curiously, there is a #2A Airport Express bus that runs slightly less often and costs twice as much. Since the airport is only 4kms away paying the extra for the express bus didn’t seem like a terrific investment. As it was the 10:58am #2 bus arrived on time and by 11:19am we had not only reached the airport but checked in as well. Of course it helped that there was absolutely no queue for the four check-in counters available.
That left us with 1h:40m to kill as we waited for our 1:00pm departure, some of which we filled in spending our last Euro coins at a coffee shop. Unlike some other international airports I could name, where you are required to be there at least two hours before your flight, based on our experienced today I’d say 40 minutes would be more than enough at Tallinn. Mind you, Tallinn International is not that big and our Estonian Air Regional Saab 340 Turboprop plane (with just 11 rows of 3 seats) wasn’t much bigger. We can’t complain about the flight though, which left on time and arrived five minutes early. Of course on a plane that size you’d be disappointed if you were expecting a three course lunch meal!
It seemed like we taxied a couple of miles after we landed before being off loaded onto a bus for the short trip to the terminal. No real problems getting through immigration etc, but I was surprised by how small the arrivals hall was. We were due to pay the balance of our pre-booked accommodation in cash at check-in so while I visited one of those nice little ATMs again, Laura had a chat to the Information people about how we were to get to our accommodation. It turns out that none of the metro lines reach the airport so we had to catch a little minibus to get to the metro. The minibus was easily found though we suspect the driver “ripped us off” on the fare by about an extra A$0.30 each! Navigating the metro system wasn’t too hard though I would make three comments. Firstly, the stations seem to be a long way apart – so far we were wondering if we’d finish up back in Tallinn! Secondly, the stations are really deep underground, so deep you’d have to think they were designed to double as bomb shelters. And finally, the services are pretty good – we never had to wait more than a minute for a train.
To cut a long story short we found our lodgings, the “Soul Kitchen”, only to learn that they were over-booked and actually could not find a record of our booking for a private room. At least the young lass was able to find us accommodation at another hostel closer to the city and refund us the deposit we had paid. So we backtracked one station in the Metro (it just seemed like 3kms) and found our alternate accommodation, the “Baby Lemonade” (seriously, where do they get these hostel names from?) quite easily. However it transpired that things were still not quite as we had hoped – our “private room” was a six-bed dorm that we would have to ourselves, but only for the first night. Well the dorm to ourselves was going to have to suffice for tonight, but we’d have to make other plans for the next two nights. Three points worth noting was that the “Baby Lemonade” was cheaper, it looked much cleaner and more modern, and the young woman who checked us in was unfailingly pleasant and helpful.
Even in our short walks to and from hostels it was immediately apparent how different St Petersburg is architecturally from the places we’ve seen so far. All the buildings seem to go on forever, easily taking up one block. Also lots of wide streets, which tend to be rather traffic-clogged, and lots and lots of big squares and monuments.
Having not had a proper lunch, and lugged our gear back and forth around St Petersburg, we had by now a fairly serious appetite to contend with so we dumped our gear and set off to try the dinner place the woman at the check in had suggested, and for which she had given us a card for what Laura thought was a free “shirt”. On the way though we called in at a Tourist Information Office who gave us the name of another hostel literally around the corner from where we were. We went there straight away and were able to book a private room for tomorrow night with a good chance that we would be able to have it for our third night here as well.
With this arranged we were able to continue on to dinner feeling things were improving, accommodation-wise. Dinner was very nice (salmon seems to be relatively cheap here) and we used some of our time between courses to check out a Russian copy of Scrabble which they had on a shelf. In case anyone is interested, the Russian language consists of 31 characters and in Scrabble they are scored thus: 9 x 1 point, 6 x2 points, 4 x 3 points, 1 x 4 points, 5 x 5 points, 3 x 8 points and 3 x 10 points. At the end of the meal we found out that the “free shirt” was in fact a “free shot” – which turned out to be a layered shot called a “B52”. For the uninitiated, the variation we were given was composed of equal parts chocolate liqueur, Bailey’s Irish Cream, and Cointreau. The waiter was insistent that it had to be skulled, and since Laura is not one for alcohol it meant that I had to drink both. They were not bad I thought, but I wouldn’t want to make a habit of them. Especially if they weren’t free.
We stopped at a supermarket on the way back to our hostel, mostly to get some change to pay the balance of our accommodation for tonight.
That left us with 1h:40m to kill as we waited for our 1:00pm departure, some of which we filled in spending our last Euro coins at a coffee shop. Unlike some other international airports I could name, where you are required to be there at least two hours before your flight, based on our experienced today I’d say 40 minutes would be more than enough at Tallinn. Mind you, Tallinn International is not that big and our Estonian Air Regional Saab 340 Turboprop plane (with just 11 rows of 3 seats) wasn’t much bigger. We can’t complain about the flight though, which left on time and arrived five minutes early. Of course on a plane that size you’d be disappointed if you were expecting a three course lunch meal!
It seemed like we taxied a couple of miles after we landed before being off loaded onto a bus for the short trip to the terminal. No real problems getting through immigration etc, but I was surprised by how small the arrivals hall was. We were due to pay the balance of our pre-booked accommodation in cash at check-in so while I visited one of those nice little ATMs again, Laura had a chat to the Information people about how we were to get to our accommodation. It turns out that none of the metro lines reach the airport so we had to catch a little minibus to get to the metro. The minibus was easily found though we suspect the driver “ripped us off” on the fare by about an extra A$0.30 each! Navigating the metro system wasn’t too hard though I would make three comments. Firstly, the stations seem to be a long way apart – so far we were wondering if we’d finish up back in Tallinn! Secondly, the stations are really deep underground, so deep you’d have to think they were designed to double as bomb shelters. And finally, the services are pretty good – we never had to wait more than a minute for a train.
To cut a long story short we found our lodgings, the “Soul Kitchen”, only to learn that they were over-booked and actually could not find a record of our booking for a private room. At least the young lass was able to find us accommodation at another hostel closer to the city and refund us the deposit we had paid. So we backtracked one station in the Metro (it just seemed like 3kms) and found our alternate accommodation, the “Baby Lemonade” (seriously, where do they get these hostel names from?) quite easily. However it transpired that things were still not quite as we had hoped – our “private room” was a six-bed dorm that we would have to ourselves, but only for the first night. Well the dorm to ourselves was going to have to suffice for tonight, but we’d have to make other plans for the next two nights. Three points worth noting was that the “Baby Lemonade” was cheaper, it looked much cleaner and more modern, and the young woman who checked us in was unfailingly pleasant and helpful.
Even in our short walks to and from hostels it was immediately apparent how different St Petersburg is architecturally from the places we’ve seen so far. All the buildings seem to go on forever, easily taking up one block. Also lots of wide streets, which tend to be rather traffic-clogged, and lots and lots of big squares and monuments.
Having not had a proper lunch, and lugged our gear back and forth around St Petersburg, we had by now a fairly serious appetite to contend with so we dumped our gear and set off to try the dinner place the woman at the check in had suggested, and for which she had given us a card for what Laura thought was a free “shirt”. On the way though we called in at a Tourist Information Office who gave us the name of another hostel literally around the corner from where we were. We went there straight away and were able to book a private room for tomorrow night with a good chance that we would be able to have it for our third night here as well.
With this arranged we were able to continue on to dinner feeling things were improving, accommodation-wise. Dinner was very nice (salmon seems to be relatively cheap here) and we used some of our time between courses to check out a Russian copy of Scrabble which they had on a shelf. In case anyone is interested, the Russian language consists of 31 characters and in Scrabble they are scored thus: 9 x 1 point, 6 x2 points, 4 x 3 points, 1 x 4 points, 5 x 5 points, 3 x 8 points and 3 x 10 points. At the end of the meal we found out that the “free shirt” was in fact a “free shot” – which turned out to be a layered shot called a “B52”. For the uninitiated, the variation we were given was composed of equal parts chocolate liqueur, Bailey’s Irish Cream, and Cointreau. The waiter was insistent that it had to be skulled, and since Laura is not one for alcohol it meant that I had to drink both. They were not bad I thought, but I wouldn’t want to make a habit of them. Especially if they weren’t free.
We stopped at a supermarket on the way back to our hostel, mostly to get some change to pay the balance of our accommodation for tonight.
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