Vladivostok -- St. Petersburg

The Vladivostok airport is about 40km outside the city. In a taxi on a Sunday morning with no traffic, it took over an hour to get there. Because there is no road. There's a way to the airport, sort of a path, but it's not a road. I guess probably there was once a crappy road and now they're building a better road, but for now it's a slow dirt/rock dusty hole-y path dotted with bulldozers and hitchhikers and stray dogs. Maybe I overuse the word postapocalyptic, but I do think it applies here. Anyway, we made it to the airport and nine loud, rattle-y, bored-adolescent-dominated (I guess they were a school group or something, restless and basically in constant motion--by the end they were having a pillow fight) hours later we were back in Moscow and had undone our two weeks of train travel. And a long layover plus another, much calmer flight after that, we're in St Petersburg. It's one of my favorite places. I'll tell you all about it when I'm not so damn tired.