Hello, Sun! We missed you!

So, we'd heard about the grey, overcast autumn we should expect, but we admit to having been more concerned about the days getting shorter.  Boy were we wrong!  We think that it had been a couple of weeks since we saw the Sun, and to have it appear again today made a huge difference.  Everything was beautiful and we regained hope that we'd see it again.  The Sun is gone again, for now, but I got a few photographs to hold us over until it returns.

First Snow for us in Finland - November 17th

Our first snow began as a wintery mix yesterday and was snow by evening.  We woke up to a few centimeters of fresh snow this morning and expect a few more before dark (at around 4pm).

The Finns are undeterred.

Liz is embracing it all as well.  Her 20 minute walk to and from UEF is getting more adventurous!

We expect more snow and temps between 2°C and -3°C for the next several days.

St. Petersburg, Russia

In Kuopio, we are fewer than 500km from St. Petersburg, Russia.  We discovered a Visa-Free way to make the trip - by boat.  Many travel agencies offer packages for such trips, and we settled on one that offered one night on the "ferry" on the way from Helsinki, one night in a hotel in St. Petersburg, and one night on the boat returning from St. Petersburg to Helsinki.  We could not be happier with our choice.

Aboard the St. Peter Line, Princess Maria, we enjoyed an evening departure from the West Harbor of Helsinki.  Our room was 9 square meters and included fold-down bunks for Liz and me.  Though not the most restful sleep, we appreciated that when we awoke, we were already in Russia.

Accompanied by many traveling students we made our way through border control (no photos allowed) and then found our tour-guide (a requirement of  visa-free travel).





We arrived to thick fog, and even Tanya, our English-speaking guide, was surprised and impressed by its density.  Undeterred, we settled in to our seats in the van for a 3-hour personal tour of the city.

It was remarkably "western" in appearance (except for all of those palaces).  Cars dominated the transportation scene and we benefited from a skilled, local driver.

The Winter Palace - now part of the Hermitage, Russia's State Museum of Art

The Bronze Horseman

The Cathedral of the Resurrection (and the ubiquitous tour buses)

We did get out of the van a few times, once to see the Peter & Paul Fortress and the St. Peter & Paul Cathedral therein.

The Tombs of Peter the Great and other rulers of Russia are there.

The interior of the St.Peter & St. Paul Cathedral was steeped in Russian history (of which I know very little).  Tombs of many of Russia's rulers were there, including Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, and Nicholas II and family, who were not interred until 1998, following the retrival and confirmation of their remains from a mass grave.

Pictured to the left is the pulpit from which Tolstoy was excommunicated from the Russian Orthodox Church in 1901.





After a lovely lunch at a restuarant that James spotted from the street, we headed to St. Issac's Cathedral for tickets to tour the interior and visit the catwalk around the Collonade.  Both were well worth it.


We climbed more than 200 stairs to the colonnade of St. Issac's Cathedral just as the sun appeared for the first time that day.

                          
   

Inside was no less spectacular.

James spotted a low boat in the canal by our hotel.  There were many such canals and many more such boats.  St. Petersburg is one of many cities with the nickname of "Venice of the North" - so named for all of the canals.  We took advantage of a nearby boat to see St. Petersburg from an entirely new perspective.





We also took advantage of the opportunity to celebrate the 14th anniversary of Liz and my meeting.  We met over coffee at the Black Sheep Deli in Amherst, MA, and fortunately for us they served coffee on the boat so that we could honor the occassion appropriately.  We then enjoyed the treat of the view from the boat.

Domina Prestige - the hotel in which we stayed for the night.

After our boat tour we took in a bit more of the city at night.  St. Issac's Cathedral was beautifully lit in the evening fog.

For our second and final day in St. Petersburg, we made a point of seeing a small portion of the Hermitage collection in the Winter Palace . . .









. . . and the Bronze Horseman again for the sake of seeing it upclose without a car window between us.

We enjoyed more views of the canals (from the street) and wound our way back to The Cathedral of the Resurrection.  

 On the recommendation of one of Liz's graduate students (thanks, Maegan!), we made a point of finding Cat Republic - a "cat Café" where the cats who work in the Hermitage as mouse control officers go to retire. Though the cats were busy with other visitors, we were pleased to have found it and picked up a few souvenirs.

Having done our best to see as much of St. Petersburg as possible in our two short days, we made it back to the boat terminal, through border control, and onto our boat with time to spare.  We enjoyed our "cruise" back to Helsinki and our return "home" to Kuopio.  None of us will forget our trip - it was simply fantastic.