Trip Two: Day One

Hello from Moscow! We arrived yesterday and are now one step closer to bring our daughter home. Here is a recap of what happened in the last day or so.

We stayed up late Tuesday night to try and get our body clocks switched around. So, after a few hours of sleep I woke up and drove downtown to get some final documents notarized and apostilled. I had a few conference calls to finish up from work before heading home. We spent the last few minutes cleaning up the house and left the house around noon yesterday. As a special treat a driver and car were provided for us. It worked out well as I was on a conference call the entire ride. We arrived at the airport and were prepared for the holiday travel madness.

The American Airlines check-in process was painless. We had three bags to check (which is a lot for us, if you know how we travel) and dropped them off hoping we'd see them again one day soon. The security line was not long considering the holiday and we moved to the front of the security line without much delay. Given the media coverage on these body scans I was wondering how this was going to work. We stepped up and put our belongings in the bins. The boots and belts came off and we proceeded through the line. I didn't see any of the body scanners at O'Hare. Much to do about nothing. We were in and through airport security in about twenty minutes. Our flight was not to leave for another 3 hours but we went to the airport early because we thought it was going to crazy. We stayed at the AA lounge and ate our last American meal for the next few weeks at Chili's.

The overnight flight to London was on a big 777. We had the middle row of five seats all to ourselves and I had the feeling that the middle seat between the four of us was not going to be empty for long. I should have taken a picture. The kids did not sleep much/at all on the plane ride. They were entertained by the meals and the on-board entertainment they brought with. We arrived in London at about 6:30 AM local time for our connecting flight to Moscow.

The last time we were connecting in London I had these thoughts. Heathrow still does not win the award for my favorite airport but it was much better this time around. First, you depart the plane. Then you walk for about 15 minutes to take a bus. The ten minute, crowded bus ride ends at Terminal 5 where the British Airways flights are handled. You then go through another long line of passport security. Then another long line of security (O'Hare was way better, by the way). Once through security you find your gate and wait. Our gate was on the main level this time so I noticed all the shops this time around. The airport looks more like a mall with departure gates instead of the other way around. We boarded our flight to Moscow and wondered where everyone else was. You can see the picture here, but it was quite the empty flight. We all slept for most of this flight and arrived at Domodedovo at 15:40 or so.

The lines for passport control in Moscow were much shorter this time around. As we learned from last time, we moved to the right so enter through the right-side windows. After studying the system I know why those lines are shorter. Each line feeds into two windows. The line on the right feeds into four windows. It's simple. We had our passports and landing cards in hand and were called to the window. Just me, N and the kids were asked to wait for the next window. I was in and through in less than two minutes but N and the kids had some trouble at their passport check-in. The baggage carousel is just on the other side of passport control so I went and picked up our bags (they were all there!) and waited for them to get through. I'm still not sure what the issue was but we were through and on our way. We passed through customs (green line, nothing to declare) and were greeted by a familiar face - our driver M from trip one! He drove us into the city (only a 1.5 hour ride this time) and we checked into our hotel.

We stayed at the Hotel National in Moscow mainly because it is close to Red Square and I receive various benefits as a Starwood member. We booked the service through American Express with our requirements given the children. We checked-in without issue and went up to our room. It is a business suite and the staff were going to bring up two rollaways for N and C. As we settled in there was a knock at the door with a team to bring in and set up the staff. There were enough people in our room to play a pick-up game of basketball if needed. Four maintenance men brought in the bids, three housekeepers made the bed, and along the way another bellhop came in to take another look at N's passport. I wonder if her Russian name and non-Russian look is throwing people off? After everyone left we took a few minutes to call our family on Skype. Below is a picture from our hotel room of the famous Tverskaya Street.

Although it was early morning for us on Chicago time we decided to force ourselves to think on Russian time. We went out for dinner at a place N and I visited during out last visit to Moscow, Elki Palki. This restaurant has traditional Russian food and it was very good. It has English menus, but the wait staff does not speak English. We did a lot of pointing. At the end of our meal we received two checks. I'm not sure why but she would also not take our credit card for both, too. Thankfully a woman sitting near us saw our communication issue and translated for us. We solved the issue by providing two credit cards. I think they separated our bill between drinks and food and couldn't swipe the same credit card within a certain amount of time. We headed back to the hotel to pick up our camera for the kids' first trip to Red Square.

I mentioned last month that being here is much different than seeing it in pictures. I didn't have this sense when we visited the Roman Coliseum, Big Ben, or any other iconic locations. The bitter cold began to set in as we walked through the gates into the square. With St. Basil's at the far end, the GUM shopping mall was preparing it's winter event with a Christmas tree and ice skating rink. N took some pictures for school and we had the kids take some pictures in front of St. Basil's. One of the pictures we have prepped C for was one doing a handstand. At C's gymnastics center there are pictures of kids doing a handstand in place throughout the US and world, but none in Russia. We helped her do the handstand and snapped the picture below. The light rain began to turn into snow as we headed back to the hotel.

So far the only thing we're missing is a voltage converter. We didn't need it for the first trip but the kids' Nintendo chargers are 120V only. We'll be looking to pick one of these up while we're here.

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