All the gold leaf in Russia...

Pardon my jumbled posts... I'm reformatting! Welcome to the first installment of #HowToTuesday... a feature where I share information about things with ya'll. In my brain, I'll be sharing mostly crafts and travel tips here, but in reality, who knows...

Also, please pardon my rumpled-ness in these photos. They were taken on day 8 of our Baltic adventure, and as it was a bit chillier than I'd expected it to be, I ended up doing some interesting layering. I was hoping to wear a tank top and these wonderful print palazzo pants, but the weather decided not to cooperate. Instead, I am wearing my tank/palazzos over my comfy playsuit and under my favourite grandpa sweater and I ended up kind of looking like a bag lady. But I was warm.

Day 8 brought us to St. Petersburg, Russia... a place that I was most definitely anticipating visiting due to bits and pieces of things that I've heard in the news and also the difficulty of anyone not on a cruise to get into the country. We were advised not to smile when going through customs. I wasn't able to and the agent took forever going through my passport. It was a bit unnerving, but we made it!

Since we didn't have any sort of special visa, we had to book a guided visa-free tour. Our guides met us right at the port and whizzed us off to experience the Metro system of St.Petersburg. I've never seen such long escalators in my whole entire life! The Metro system runs up to 86 meters below the city surface! The stations are full of mosaic masterpieces, chandeliers and are the cleanest of any underground transit I've seen in any other city. Period. The Metro offers a weekly/monthly card system or allows you to buy tokens for a handful of change per ride.

After this experience, our guides took us out to the Peterhof Palace and gardens... the Russian equivalent of the French Versailles. They were quite similar, though the gardens at Peterhof are full of trick fountains and the palace has much more gold leafing than I remember seeing at Versailles. It was all a bit overwhelming. We grabbed a quick lunch and then headed to the city of Pushkin, where we toured Catherine Palace, another sprawling wonder of gold leaf.

I shall fill you in on the second day of our adventure next #TeachItTuesday!