Are you flexible when you travel?

When you travel, you HAVE to be flexible. If you are one of those people that can’t handle it when things don’t go exactly as you planned, they you really need to stay home.

Traveling, especially when you travel with friends, will almost always result in something you didn’t expect. The day we set out to see the fountains at Peterhof was one of those days.

I wasn’t feeling particularly well on this day, the Russian food was really upsetting my stomach which doesn’t make you want to walk around and explore. However, I was in Russia and I wasn’t going to let anything stop me from seeing all that I could.  I told Carly where I would like to go, she was ok with it and she planned everything.

Thankfully she was ok with planning everything that day because seriously, I wasn’t up to trying to figure out anything. My stomach was really acting up and I just wanted to stay in bed.

Anyway, we get to where we wanted to go and as I’m walking around I’m looking for the fountains and I can’t find them. But, we did find the statue I wanted to see:

The dimensions of this statue are different. I had never seen a statue with these proportions before. This is a statue of Peter the Great, by Mikhail Shemiakin. It’s supposed to be an exact representation of Peter the Great’s height. Not sure if his head being so small is true to life but how can we really know? This is found at the Peter Paul Fortress, NOT at Peterhof.

So I look in our guide book and realize that even though this is something I wanted to see, Peterhof, where I thought we were going, was not where we were.

Carly felt badly when she realized that she had made a mistake but I didn’t really care, we weren’t on any schedule and it’s always great to see something new. At this point I’m still feeling crappy and I’m walking really slowly (Thankfully, Carly is super nice and didn’t mind walking slowly with me. Seriously, my stomach was not behaving).

She felt badly cause she knew I didn’t feel well but I wasn’t angry with her or even irritated. And what was I supposed to do? Get mad at her? Make her feel worse than she already did? That wouldn’t have been very nice and she didn’t make the mistake on purpose.

Things happen, so you roll with it and move on. And when you are good friends with someone, the last thing you want to do is make them feel worse about something, so there was really nothing to say except figure out how to get to where we wanted to go.

Where I wanted to go was about an hour outside of the city so by the time she figured out how to get there (we just hopped in a taxi cause I wasn’t in the mood to hop on various metros and busses) it was late in the afternoon. But hey, who cares!

I looked at it like this: We had enough cash to hop in a taxi and enjoy the sights as we rode along, we didn’t have to worry about if we were going the right way, and we still got to see the fountains at Peterhof.

It was raining off and on all afternoon, but this family wasn’t letting the rain stop them from having fun!

Still smiling and happy, even after plans didn’t go the way we wanted. No need to stain a friendship over something so silly.

I can’t read Russian but I think this is pretty self-explanatory.

On the way out of the gardens we were hungry so we stopped and ate. Of course I was a bit afraid but thankfully I was able to eat and not get sick. As we were eating there were two couples in front of us, one young, one older. I thought the difference in how they were interacting with each other was funny. The young couple were totally engaged, looking at each other the whole time. The older couple barely talked and the guy was on the phone the whole time.

Thankfully on the way back we saw a little van that took us to the closest metro stop so we didn’t have to take a taxi home. It was small and full but it was cheap and got us to the metro so we were just fine.

So, it turned out to be a lovely day, even though I was ill and we got to Peterhof late. Traveling is all about the adventure, not the plan. So the next time you are traveling and things don’t go right, don’t get upset, just keep it moving and enjoy the time you have wherever you are. We sure did.