I started the last day of our trip right by eating a mozzarella and tomato baguette sandwich. Sunny had a lot of mailing to do (she loves postal systems!) and so we got to spend a lot of time at the post office as she picked packaging and stamps. I found a cute Finnish polar bear there, but my collection of stuffed animals is already too large so I left it behind. Luckily our hotel was right next to the bus stop for Finnair, so we had a direct route to the airport.
Checking my bag at the airport (as I had vodka) was quite a terrible experience. The Finnish families in front of me would literally walk up to the American counter, confused, and seemingly spend a good 10 minutes chatting with the counter person before getting their bags up to be checked. After about half an hour of this (in a short line too!), I finally got to the security person at the front of the line who seemed to be confused as my destination was New York and not Chicago. She meekly eventually got a hold of her supervisor (an American) who told me that even though I had purchased my tickets through American, my flight was on Finnair so I had to go wait in their line again. Luckily this line was shorter, but it was still irritating. At least once I got through all of this, Max and Sunny had found a place with delicious ice cream. Even though it was 2.6 euros and I spilled a bit of it on my chair, I still bought it and ate every piece.
The flight to NY was nothing to write home about, but having pizza, Snapple, and cell phone service in a place seemingly far less expensive than Finland was excellent. Being back in LA was just awesome and I was happy to just relax and go to sleep.
All in all, it was an excellent trip and I got to see a part of the world very different from the places I’ve been so far. I’m not sure I will visit most places again but I feel we spent too little time in St. Petersburg especially, with its beautiful riverfront and palaces. Moscow was probably the least friendly place we visited, while Minsk felt the most like a real city, mostly because Max knew where to take us.