Travelling Woes

After a couple of days in Moscow, Luke's feet were just killing him. Why, you ask? Because of these crappy old shoes.

It became very apparent that we were going to be walking around quite a bit on this trip and that Luke's shoes were going to cause, if not severe medical problems, at least marital contention due to Luke's pained feet and my desire to see more sights. Yes, something needed to be done. So, we went into the GUM (pronounced goom), the big shopping mall at Red Square, to find a new, more walking-friendly pair of shoes. We were successful, thanks very much to Luke's Russian skills. Hooray! These new shoes saved Luke's feet and saved the rest of our trip.

Here's Luke in the GUM.

Our next city to see was St. Petersburg, where Luke served his mission. We took an overnight train from Moscow to get there. It was a beautiful red train and reminded me of the Hogwarts Express. It felt magical to be on that train. That is, until the 3 other passengers (including Luke) in our little room were fast asleep and I was feeling hot and stuffy and unable to sleep a wink. I don't know what possessed me to call the top bunk, but it was a poor call in the end. There was no air up there and I wanted to strip down to next to nothing, but was restrained by the presence of the other passenger who we didn't know. (They don't know it, but they should thank me for my self restraint). So, I was up for most of the night. After a while, I decided to jump down and walk around the train a little. I found that the hallway was much cooler and enjoyed the view out of the window. It was actually quite stunning and for the half an hour (at least) that I stood there writing in my journal and enjoying the Russian country side as the sun rose, I wasn't even annoyed that I couldn't get any sleep. I eventually returned to my bunk and started to get some shut eye, but no sooner had I started to drift away that the others awoke and started getting ready as the train pulled into the station in St. Petersburg. I was ticked.

Here's me sitting on the bottom bunk. I'm smiling because this is when we first got on the train.

At the train station in St. Petersburg in front of our red train. Isn't it beautiful!?

We got into St. Petersburg so early that we could not check into our hotel, so we dropped off our bags and walked around to see what we could. Luke took us to the apartment building where he stayed for part of his mission (we had to take the subway to get there), which was cool to see. Then we walked around a bunch more and eventually, because the subway station we were counting on for our return was closed, ended up walking a number of miles back to our hotel. We were exhausted by the time we got to the hotel and, though Luke's feet were feeling better, my feet had started to really hurt because I was wearing sandals instead of my sneakers. Well, at least we can laugh about it now.

Luke in front of his old apartment building.