Off to Heathrow and then St Petersburg
As mentioned previously, we are spending a night at a hotel near Heathrow so that we only have a short distance to drive on the morning we fly to Russia. Also due to Pat recovering from back surgery and a hip problem, we are less mobile on this trip than previous trips and as well as a suitcase and a rucksack, we have a travel wheelchair to cope with.
So staying near the airport, with a view of one of the runways seems to be a good idea.
Airlines have become very disability friendly over the past few years and we have booked support at both Heathrow and Saint Petersburg.
Check-in and getting to the gate was very easy although we suffered slightly from this being one of the busiest weekends in the year for travellers at Heathrow.
The flight was uneventful and allowed us to take the usual very poor selfie.
We had specified that we wanted to be met at the arrivals gate by someone with an airport wheelchair. For us the great advantage of this was that our wheelchair pusher bypassed the queues at immigration and took us straight to an official who with the usual humourless face and attitude, stamped our passports. There was a slightly nervous wait at Saint Petersburg baggage retrieval for our wheelchair to arrive on the luggage carousel but eventually it did so and we had arrived with all of our luggage.
Viking boats, and it seems all other longer distance boats, moor some distance out of the centre of Saint Petersburg at a place known as The Salt Pier (bottom right of the picture below).
It was about 30 minutes from the airport however and we did not have to drive through the city and suffer its very slow traffic.
Our cabin on the Trevor was exactly as pictured in the brochure and very comfortable
In summary, getting to Trevor was quite easy and not too tiring.
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