Surely one of the greatest achievements engineering of the last 30 years was Concorde. Wherever the hook-nosed, sleek machine was you knew there would be crowds of admirers and people who would be standing on the observation deck dreaming that they were one of the pop stars, hedge fund managers or George Hamilton’s who would experience the thrill of traveling faster than the speed of…well…….everything.

But now………it’s gone.

I don’t feel sorry for the people in suits who now need seven hours to get across the Atlantic. It was, after all, their meanness that caused Concorde’s demise in the first place.

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Good Morning from St.Petersburg, where things went a little smoother than last time. We had 2,300 on carnival tours today, with about 1000 on the evening shows and 2,000 plus again on tomorrows. Well, things started with a bit of a bump. We arrived at 7 am but the officials arrived a little later and by the time they had devoured to full trays of pastries the ship was not cleared until 7:35 am. By that time we had 600 people ready to disembark on the Grand Tour and about 500 people on private tours.

So, we started a little late.

Yes, there were longish lines at the huts used for Immigration but overall things went very well. The Carnival tours and the guests on private tours were allowed to disembark at the same time contrary to speculation on some of the boards. Once ashore, there are two lines……..one for Carnival tours and one for “Independents “as they are called by the Russian officials.

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