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Today was a long day. After touring the Hermitage Museum at the Winter Palace in the morning, we hopped on a plane for a ~3.5 hr flight to Mineralnye Vody(if you think that sounds like Mineral Water, that’s because that’s exactly what it means), the closest town to Elbrus with flights to St Petersburg. But wait there’s more! We still had a 3 hour van ride through mountain roads at night to get to our destination – a village called Terskol, just a couple of miles from the Georgian border, and a couple of miles from Elbrus.

I actually started the day with a 10 mile jog, after Aaron & Gina talked me into jogging with them. I have to say, jogging along the St Petersburg Riverfront at 5 AM when no one was around was a truly amazing experience. I feel like I took in more of the city during that jog than during the entire tour.

The Hermitage itself was incredible. Not only is it the largest art gallery in the world(bigger than the Louvre), but the building itself is as impressive as the art inside. It used to be the Winter Palace of royalty, and it clearly shows.

After parting ways with our guide Milana whom we didn’t expect to see again, we began our journey. This was made more miserable than it should have been due to a number of factors: a) the A/C in the plane didn’t work, so it was hot. b) It seems a Russian custom is to take your 1 year old kid on a plane – my row had 3 mothers with babies on their laps and of course they cried the entire way. The mothers all thought this was cute and kissed them when they cried(I counted over 50 kisses from one mother alone), and c) I got motion sick on the van ride from Mineralnye to Terskol.

Mike says that things used to be much worse back before commercial jets flew to Mineralnye, and that the Russian way is just to deal with it & not complain. Clearly I’m not Russian.

After getting into Terskol at around 10 at night, the team had dinner – I passed due to my mild motion sickness. However it sounded like I didn’t miss much. Russians have no concept of vegetarian food, so the fare was – as Mike likes to put it – Rustic.

Continue to Day 3 – Terskol Acclimatization Hike