June I am planning on applying for VISA's for the both of us.

The application is a process. Only because the application involves traveling out of state, to drop off the paper work. Then when it is processed, the return trip. There are two options for an application drop off, the first is San Francisco, the second is Seattle. Only four hours to Seattle and I can take a train instead of driving.
Back in the day, when applying for a VISA, one would have to go directly to the consulate to process the paperwork. Now there is a service that is used to process this for you. Why the second or third party, because of money I am sure. The cost total for Loki and I to get our VISA's is about 400 dollars. In addition to our airplane tickets at this point, the total cost has rounded up to 2000 dollars.
The next step is to pick up the passport with the visa adhered to the inside of it. Oh did I mention you have to leave the passport behind. It's exciting and not at all disconcerting to leave a passport behind to at an office.
Yep, it's a great feeling knowing that someone else has control of your passport. Last time it was a difficult process, but still anxiety causing.

More birthday fun !

I am proud to announce !

No, not that announcement! I am proud to announce, that we got our plane tickets to Russia ! We are going to fly to Helsinki then take the ferry to Saint Petersburg. When we fly out, we will leave directly from Saint Petersburg. 

I am super excited ! This is going to be a blast because we won't be in the winter! 

This is how we celebrated my birthday in Russia. It was interesting.

This was only the second birthday that I have celebrated without my parents. 

Sergey is preparing the meat grinder. This was bought before they bought the juicer. I don't know how frequently they grind beef at home. I didn't really see ground beef at the stores we went to. So it must be a pretty common appliance. 

These were some of the roses they bought me. They are odd number of roses because that is the custom over their. Odd numbers are positive numbers. 

 Here is another photo of the roses, and some grapes that were bought. The small sad plant is my attempt at an Valentine's day slash birthday gift for Sergey. 

The box is a small box of jewelry that Larisa was sharing with me. I was so overwhelmed and upset that I didn't take any home with me. I wanted to keep them there because I was shy about that. 

The stove top, and oven were tiny as referenced by Loki, the top has four burners with a flat top. It was a very nice oven, and stove. It wasn't a gas oven/stove which was great because I wasn't going to light my hair on fire, or gas us. 

Look again,

So you are walking around the city of Saint Petersburg after you visited Grand Maket and all of the sudden you see an image that you think you saw on a puzzle before. I was looking around because I do that. 

I am not sure if we were walking to a station, or waiting for a bus, or what the circumstances were. The poster behind the lady all trimmed in furs, was very intriguing to me. What is it advertising, I don't know. It seems like one of those Cirque du Soliel esque programs. It was in town during 2/8-24 so there was a possibility we could have gone to it. It had interesting characters on the poster, the puppet master guy, the protagonist, the love interest. 

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_Triumphal_Gate)

Then I noticed the Moscow gate, which I didn't know exactly what it was or why it's in this location. Underneath, or around the gate runs a street trolley, taking up the middle of the street. Most of the buildings in the photo are residential. 

So this was the rare occasion that Loki actually had on tennis shoes. Sergey has jeans on, but would wear fleece "long underwear" under the pants. Sergey normally didn't wear gloves, Larisa doesn't have gloves on and Loki has his hands tucked into his jacket. 

This was the trolley that runs in the middle of the road. Not this particular section, but other sections of trolley, drivers will drive on the trolley path north or south to get around cars etc. Also yes, that's a Carls Jr over there to the left of the screen. Everything above the Carls Jr is residential. 

So here is my picturesque view of the Moscow Gate. The cars are driving in three or four lanes, depending on where you can squeeze and what time of day it is. The "billboard" on the bottom in the "shelter" 80000 is in Rubles so that would be about 2600 USD. To the left is a real estate sign. I think they are saying either the price is 1.3 million rubles or thirty thousand dollars. The middle sign is for Gazprom, which is the national oil industry. Gazprom provides natural gas for homes, and gasoline for automobiles. It's been around for 20 years only because it was created post communism collapse. The third sign is a transit sign. Each is different and makes absolutely no sense. If you speak Russian you are good to go. 

Oh and the signs constantly flip/change. 

This is one of the few subway images I could collect. We had purchased the stroller at this point, but because we were taking the taxi we didn't bring it with us. 

Sergey and Larisa frequently "debated" the taxi/subway/ walking conundrum. Generally I preferred the underground or bus transportation because driving on the streets is ridiculously scary.  

Grand Maket For the last time!

I think the most interesting thing about this image, is the detail that they put into creating it. Clearly it looks like police officers trying to arrest someone. The crowd of people, the uniformed Police, the automobiles, and the buildings are all carefully crafted.

This is an image of Pulkova airport, I believe. I am not really attempting to read it that well. Most of the displays are pretty accurate considering that I am looking at them from above, and that everything is written in Russian. At this point I was super excited because we would be leaving soon enough for the states. The young(er) man standing to the left of the photo has pretty typical hair for a youth. 

Here we are attempting to leave. That is Sergey and Larisa talking/holding Loki of course. It was really pleasant this day, and while we rode in a cab to the museum, we walked to the train station. 

This is the master diagram of the train layout. I was amazed, slightly, at how much time and detail was put into the train layouts.  

I thought this was an interesting image, because I initially thought it was a photo of Alexander square, but on second examination it is actually a photo of the miniatures.  We were able to eat at the Grand Maket, and they had pretty traditional russian food. Also they had tea, coffee and soda and some dessert type items. It was very interesting that this place was so huge, and that there was so much room for guests. Clearly this is a large tourist destination. 

This is the work room where the items are made and the trains are made. I learned that most of the items are made right there on site. I think that speaks for how much time is spent on the lay outs. You will notice that Loki has on tennis shoes, eventually I would bring an extra pair of shoes to trade out instead of his snow boots, if we would be at a location for an extended period of time. This day because it was nicer, and "warmer" I was able to convince Sergey and Larisa to allow Loki to go without his snow boots. Towards the end it was very difficult to get prepared to leave the apartment with all the dressing we had to do prior to leaving. 

More detailed images of Grand Maket

So we spent several hours at Grand Maket! I was surprised at how many young children were there. Loki was the youngest of the children that were there. 

This is showing the water, it didn't move and it didn't shimmer. But it had boats and submarines in them. 

There were lots of cutaways to show you the inner workings of the train layout. 

Here is an image of night time in Grand Maket. 

A cut away of the submarine. 

Here is Loki looking at the city. This was the Saint Petersburg Section. I think that what impressed me the most was how detailed the layouts were. 

The gold cathedral is part of Peter Paul Fortress. 

This is one of my favorite scenes. There were lots of scenes that had police involvement. 

So he is still looking at Peter Paul Fortress and if you notice underneath there is a train running. The layout had constant activity.