St. Petersburg

so today we arrived in estonia. we took a train from st. petersburg to tallinn and had a nice trip in a 4 person sleeper compartment (though the border control and russian customs agents were pretty intimidating). our time in st. petersburg was good...we covered a lot of ground in a short amount of time. we saw the summer palace, the winter palace, pushkin, a bunch of cathedrals, russian state museum, and the hermintage which was great. we also saw swan lake at the hermitage theater which was very small and cute and apparently used to be the royal family\s private theater. the hotel was surprisingly nice, we had a driver and guide the whole time, and ate borscht and vireniki. the hermitage and ballet were probably the highlights for me...we found the people there catered much less to tourists than in the scandinavian countries and did not want to speak english but there were people that tried to help us along the way. estonia seems very quaint - at the least the old city where we are staying. there are lots of cute cafes and buildings but it seems to be all tourists (with money exchange and souvenir shops on every corner). we also saw the synagogue in st. petersburg which someone told us was the second largest in europe which i find hard to believe because it wasn't that big...it was pretty though so i tokk some pictures. we're going to try to upload pictures again tomorrow so hopefully that will work. i miss everyone and am looking forward to being home in 12 days!