I, a US citizen, toured Leningrad and Moscow for two weeks in January 1973.

• The tour was organized by Finnair, Finland's airline.

• The group flew from New York to Helsinki. We took an overnight train to Leningrad.

• We stayed in hotels. They were comfortable, not fancy.

• In the daytime, we went to several museums, some specialized shops for tourists with foreign currency, the Kremlin, Lenin's tomb, meals in restaurants.

• During our free time, we were allowed to wonder out on our own. Another guy and I went to the biggest outside pool in Europe. This was in January. The pool was heated. So much steam rose into air we can only see about five feet. The men's changing room was run by many little old women. The men were nude. I acted like a stupid American by wringing out my wet swimming pants on the floor instead of the big barrels provided for this purpose. One of the old ladies shouted at me in Russian. I don't know Russian, but it wasn't hard to know what she was saying. The guy I was with was standing behind her laughing.

• We also partied with a group of Russians. Russians seemed friendly and out-going. We listened to the Beatles album Let It Be. They also showed us Russian stuff, e g , commentation pins.

• We flew on Aeroflot from Leningrad to Moscow and back. They fed us peppermint candy and possibly tea or water, I don't remember now.

• Oh yeah, Russian vanilla ice cream was very tasty.