end of the tour

Our tour officially ended today at noon. We are still here in St Petersburg waiting for our night train to Riga. We had thought we'd go into the city center again today and walk around, but it was pouring rain and now it is dry but freezing cold! I think Dasha told me it was 9 celcius. burr. So we are staying around the hotel, just relaxing, eating and spending the rest of our money!

It was sad to say goodbye to the rest of the group today. Granny's friends (well mine too..) left this morning and she was all sad to say bye. But perhaps they will get her over to South Africa. I have been wanting to go to Africa for ages, but Granny has never had much interest. Now perhaps she'll go..or maybe they will all meet in Europe sometime. And then the biggest bunch of our group left at 1:30 - the girls i hung out with most of the trip. I feel that chances are i'll see some of them again or at the least, we are all on facebook, so we'll keep in touch. Maybe i have just gotten used to saying goodbye to people, so i know you never know what will happen!

I hung out with Dasha (our tour leader) a bit today running around looking for chocolates for men.... finally found them. What are chocolates for men? It is a regular Nestle candy bar, but basically they had an advertising campaign here saying that if a woman got these chocolates for their men, the men would all of the sudden learn to be sweet, caring and compassionate - bringing flowers, etc. haha. so of course we needed some to take back!

Today in saying our goodbyes, one of the girls i just adored during the trip told me that she didn't have any grandparents anymore, so Granny is now like her Granny too! It was super sweet. Everyone really seemed to enjoy granny on the trip. perhaps they wanted to go a bit faster sometimes, but regardless there were also two other ladies on the tour who weren't too far behind Granny's age. I thought the mix of ages made it a really great group. we had some older wiser ladies and some younger ones as well.

Off to Riga tonight to see Sylvia. I am really excited to see her. It has been so great to be able to meet up with people who have lived in India - I feel I get a good view on their lives now and it sort of makes me appreciate what we have in India seeing all of them miss it so much!
Will update again soon!