After filling out the necessary paperwork we were met by Zina our translator who beyond anyone I had expected meeting as our translator. She was young (we found out later that although she acted and looked much older than she was, she was only 20!), beautiful and hip and fun. She helped us get our stuff onto the tax and we heated to the hotel. I could not believe how huge St. Petersburg was. I was not expecting such a beautiful and remarkable city. It was well developed with a lot of traffic and people and huge expansive buildings that if anywhere else would have been gaudy, but here they were beautiful and magnificent. Our hotel, Nevsky 22, was adorable. It was in the best location, right in the middle of the city with lots of restaurants, cafes, shops, and ten minutes away from the Hermitage Museum and many cathedrals. It was incredible how accessible it would be for us especially for David on crutches. David, Josh, and I settled into our hotel rooms and laid down for an hour and had to put on our old clothes after showering, yuck! We met Zina outside the hotel who took us to dinner at “Leaves and branche” (I think it sounds a lot cooler in Russian) a chain ethnic Russian food restaurant five minutes away from our hotel. Half of the food we were not sure we could identify but we enjoyed most of it and we survived. From there Zina took us on a walking tour of St. Petersburg. We could not believe that it was 9:30 at night and it was sunny outside. It started to get dark around 10ish. Being a morning person, I totally loved that it stayed light outside for so long. On the walking tour we saw rivers, channels, the outside of the Hermitage and the main square in which the museum was located, and she showed us the hip places to be. All three of us felt really lucky to have Zina as our translator and be in such a cool and beautiful city.

After the walking tour, Zina took us to an underground cool café with couches and comfy pillows where we got yummy cakes (we had to eat as much bread as possible before Passover!) and exotic teas-strawberry and cream tea, blueberry tea, Irish cream tea. The Rabbi of the Reform Jewish community of St. Petersburg, Michael Farbman, met us at our hotel before we all went to bed so that we could chat and talk about the schedule of our trip there. I looked at my watch and it was midnight, our bags had made it but we would not be getting them until early afternoon and we needed to get some rest because we had a long day ahead of us. Michael is a very organized, friendly and respectful person and I am sure we will enjoy working with him. I think I will learn a lot on this trip. Thank goodness it is time for bed!