New Year's 2015 part 4

Folk Dancing

15 years ago Chris and I came to St. Petersburg with my sister and her husband.  We brought them to a folk dance concert at this very same building!  It was so much fun to be back here watching the same-ish type of program!

Helsinki

We got up at the butt-crack of dawn and rode a shuttle bus for 4 hours, it picked us up at our apartment and dropped us off at the temple.  It wasn't a bad way to travel, other than the border crossing.  At border control, we had to get out of the car in sub-zero weather and wait in line at a both to show our passports.  This happened twice on the Russian side and twice on the Finish side.  

This is a life-sized nativity on the temple grounds.

The temple has housing where people can stay when they come to the temple.  This is available since a lot of the people who usually come for a week at a time.  We didn't stay the night but we loafed around in between our time in the temple.

Bought this salad on our way out of town.  It was the best salad I have ever had!  Just wanted to share the joy.

New Year's Eve

 

We went down to Palace Square for the countdown to the new year.  There were tons of people there and lots of pretty lights.  Sadly, there was no official countdown.  It was pretty funny actually.  We kept waiting for and official hoorah but, there wasn't ever anything.  Lots of cheering and random celebrating.  Around 12:10, we headed back to our apartment.  It was a little less climatic than we were anticipating but, still fun.

Also a lot of drunk Santas.