We’ve gone through all the preparation of visas, the planning, the Russian language study, and finally we’re ready for the big trip.
Friday night I had a drinking party that I somehow survived without too much damage, and so we got up at the crack of dawn on Saturday and loaded our suitcase into the car.
It was an easy drive to Kobe airport, an easy ride across the bay on the ferry, and we had no problems catching our departing flight to Seoul on time.
We flew on Korean airlines the first two legs of the trip, so it was natural to spend some time at the airport at Incheon. It is a big airport, but it does tend to repeat with the same pattern of duty-free stores and restaurants, terminal after terminal. We had some good food for lunch – I had braised kimchee with a fried pork cutlet in a fish soup, and Kuniko went with the old favorite – Bibimbap. The kimchee was free for the taking on the table, sitting at room temperature – that was a little surprising. We had a couple of beers, and then went down to the gate and boarded our plane for Moscow.
The plane had an extra 40 minutes waiting time before pulling away from the gate. The announcement said that there was heavy congestion over China, but I don’t know what that really means.
Once we actually left it was a very smooth nine hour flight to Moscow. The entertainment system was quite good, and with plenty of movies and music to keep us occupied we didn’t need to even open a book.
Once we arrived at Sheremetyevo Airport, one of the three international airports surrounding Moscow, we lined up in a very slow immigration line. It might be the longest we’ve ever waited for immigration. The other passengers were starting to get impatient. Once we finally got our turn, the immigration agent gave Kuniko lots of extra questions. I was starting to get worried, but they finally let her pass in. I went through without even one question. Weird.
I had arranged with a taxi company to pick us up, but when we got into the arrival terminal there was nobody waiting for us at all. We waited for a few minutes, but figured that they went ahead and took someone else – between the long wait for departure and the long immigration line we must have been more than an hour late. Luckily it was no problem to get another taxi from the official taxi stand. The prices were marked and I got a receipt in advance so no problems with negotiation and shady drivers. It was about double the price of the taxi that I had arranged, but I guess you get what you pay for.
It was only about a 30 minute drive to our hotel since there was no traffic at all. The hotel was located a short walk from Red Square, called the St. Regis Hotel. It turned out to be a great location, and it was a really nice hotel. Kuniko hit a home run with this place.
After checking in and dropping off our bags we took a short stroll to Red Square. The temperature was perfect – a little cool and very dry. It was a big difference from the hot wet summer we left behind in Japan.
In Red Square we got our first look at St. Basil’s Cathedral. This was the main attraction for Kuniko and we took lots of pictures of it. It was just as beautiful and impressive as the guidebook photos. Red Square itself was quite large, and we could easily see Lenin’s Tomb, several other churches, the walls of the Kremlin, and a big shopping center. Later we’d have time to explore in more detail, but for now we were happy to enjoy the experience of being in the center of Red Square.
Because it was so far north it stayed light out for a long time, so we could explore the area around our hotel. Everything in Moscow was on such a big scale – the roads, the buildings, everything. The main road surrounding central Moscow had 5 lanes going each direction, which made crosswalks impractical. Instead we found that you need to find underground crossings and travel on foot that way.
At this time of night there were a lot of young people out and about, and you could feel the kind of nightclub culture that some big cities have. We found a “beer restaurant” that had a huge patio area with outdoor dining, and so we sat down and luckily got handed an English/Russian menu.
With our Russian beers we had some pelmeni (dumplings stuffed with meat) and also some fish cakes that did a good job absorbing all the beer. Since we had spent a very long day traveling it was good to slow down and soak in the city. We tried some Russian phrases with the staff, but they looked too busy to tell us what we were doing wrong, so we gave up and just used English. Later we had more success with Russian.
After our beer and snacks we suddenly felt super sleepy. Maybe the adrenaline and excitement of arrival in a new city wore off, so we made our way back to our hotel to crash. Thanks to the long flight and the time difference we ended up having a very long Saturday.
