Fall Break Day 8: SAUNA

Our final day in St. Petersburg began with a tour of Spilled Blood Cathedral. Although it may look similar to Saint Basils in Red Square, it was quite different on the inside. It was all one giant room on the inside with elaborate icons decorating every surface. If you don't know anything about Russian Orthodoxy, you should educate yourself. It is pretty cool. After our tour we went to lunch at a pie place.

This delicious creation was apple pie. Probably the best thing I ate all week. Then some of us went to the Russian Sauna. When you think sauna, you are probably thinking a small room with benches that you sit in for a few minutes to relax and leave. Wrong. Sauna in Russia is something completely different. It is a 2+ hour cleaning ritual. We all got naked together, cleaned ourselves, sat in the sauna, hit each other with birch leaves, jumped in a pool of ice cold water, soaked our feet, poured water all over each other, and repeated the process over and over until we felt completely renewed and refreshed with all the toxins out of our bodies and all of our pores completely purged of dirt and oil. Learn more about the history and tradition of banya/sauna. It was the best way to end a long week of constant walking. Extremely relaxing and fun. My skin has also never felt so soft.

We headed off for the train station that evening and took a similar overnight train back to Vilnius, Lithuania. This time my cabin had a wide variety of people: Me, a South Korean, a Lithuanian, a Russian, a Latvian, and an Englishman. The Latvian was drunk the whole time and just kept buying candy for us and telling us how pretty we were in broken English. The Lithuanian spent most of his time occupying the drunk man and making sure he didn't do anything stupid. The Englishman was just happy that another person on the train spoke English and kept feeding us tea and bread with honey. The Russian lady just kept quiet and looked confused the whole time. It made for an interesting ride, that's for sure. We slept for most of the ride, with wake up calls at 4 and 4:30 am for boarder patrol checks.

Once in Vilnius, we caught a bus back to Klaipeda. I slept the whole way. I was happy to be back to the land of the most beautiful skies.