To connect with the flight to Moscow, we had to get the 0605 flight from Leeds Bradford to Amsterdam. Ugh. I am so grateful we only live ten minutes from the airport. There wasn’t much of a queue at check-in (unlike at the adjacent Jet2 counter) and we got through the security-pantomime checks pretty quickly. We had a bit of breakfast in the cafe, marvelling at the buckets of coffee and many pints of beer that were being consumed by our fellow passengers. At 5am. Ahem.
The flight to Amsterdam went smoothly and we arrived on time. Much to our amazement, we arrived at the gate next to the one we were departing from and said gate didn’t change repeatedly while we were waiting. I almost missed our usual 10km hike across Schipol.
I “enjoyed” being kicked in the back repeatedly by a small child during the onward flight but we’re really just grateful that said small child and its smaller sibling didn’t cry for the whole flight. Only other thing really of note from that flight was that the food was ACTUALLY QUITE NICE. It was a hot cheese DeliFrance mini-baguette, with a tasty (albeit mostly garlicky taste) feta & rice salad, followed by a “yogurt” dessert, that was really just a creamy mousse thing with strawberry jam on it. Plus, the sealed containers made a pleasant whoosh sound when opened because of the air pressure difference and that thrilled easily-amused-me no end.
As we were taxiing in from the runway at Moscow Sheremetyevo Airport, I looked out of the window and saw the Cyrillic script on the various Russian planes dotted about the place and it made me realise that, yes, we were actually in Russia with all the scary language difficulties that entailed. I suddenly wished I had listened to more than the first chapter of the “Beginning Russian” language course we bought a couple of days earlier… And in case that didn’t start my nerves jangling enough, we had our first very scary hurdle to get through as soon as we got off the plane: passport control and visa control.
In the sensible part of my mind, I knew we would be ok: I had got all the documentation sorted, the agent had dealt with it, we had something official looking from the Russian embassy in our passports and the agent (I hoped) had checked it was alright on its way back to us. I had also checked the dates concerned so was reasonably confident that everything would go ok. But, of course, that part of my mind wasn’t in charge at that point and I was petrified something would go wrong and we would be faced with immigration officers from hell, who didn’t speak any english and our phrasebook would only get us as far as ordering blinies and asking the way to the toilet. The wait in the queue for passport control felt considerably longer than it was (and it was already pretty long). Eventually it was my turn (Leach made me go first) and I shuffled forward to face the woman in the glass box. She took my passport and my landing papers (a two-part document you have to complete before arrival: they take the first bit and the second bit is stamped when “registered” by the hotels and then again when you leave the country) and I smiled nervously as I waited for her to do various clicky-clacky on her computer then multiple stamping. Then my passport came back, the green light buzzed and I could leap over the barrier and run joyously into Russia’s heartland. I mean, wait for John then collect our luggage.
We got stopped on the way through customs and the nervous faction of my brain overrode SensibleLobe again in its ever-so-smug manner. The customs guard wanted to talk to John. He asked him where we had come from and John replied Amsterdam, and before that Leeds Bradford (then clarified that as being in England). The guard looked John up and down then let us go through. Based on later experiences, we wonder if the guard had thought he was a Russian, who had snuck through to steal baggage. He does look like a wanton criminal, after all.
As soon as we left customs, the taxi drivers descended. The place was full of people holding up signs and those that weren’t were offering their business to everyone that walked by. We already had a transfer booked so charged through, repeatedly saying “nyet”, and found ourselves a seat until our driver turned up. Usually, I wouldn’t arrange a transfer from the airport – we coped well on the local bus/metro combination in Prague, and the various airport-city buses in the other locations (the best being the airport to hotel minibus service in Budapest) – but it didn’t look that straightforward to Moscow (bus then metro then another metro then a bit of a walk) so we went down the transfer route. The hotel offered to arrange one for us for circa GBP£60 but I found a company called Alex Transfers that charged between US$40 and US$45 (GBP£20-25) for the same journey (depending on the type of car selected), with the promise of English-speaking drivers. We plumped for the cheapest option and got an old Lada and a driver who could speak minimal-English but wasn’t a particularly chatty soul. For cost alone, I would recommend them – particularly since you can book them online, using an English language website – but I obviously can’t comment on their suitability from a business/smarter-car-required point of view.
The drive into the city took about an hour because of congestion. Strangely enough, the worst traffic was between the airport and the Garden Ring (the middle ring road, around the outside of the city centre), and it got considerably easier once we were in the city centre itself. As soon as we were within the Garden Ring, everywhere we looked, we were wowed by the architecture. It was all so big: the buildings – particularly the “seven sisters” that we glimpsed from time to time – seemed to have been built on a frighteningly inhuman scale. Truly amazing.
Eventually, the domes of St Basil’s rose up in front of us and we drove over the Moskvoretski bridge, over the Moskva river and there was the hotel. We were booked in at the Baltschug Kempinski hotel because, when I was looking at the figures at the planning stage, it didn’t seem to be that much more to stay there than any other swish city centre hotel and the Baltschug couldn’t really be beaten on location: just over the bridge from Red Square.
We got a very warm, open armed, welcome to the hotel from the cheerful receptionist, free vodka in little freebie dolls and our luggage was whisked up to our room while we were shown around the public areas of the hotel. The room itself was great – huge, with an equally big bathroom, and all very nice and swishy but the best thing was the view. From lying down in the bed, a casual glance would be looking out over the Kremlin; sitting on the end of the bed would reveal St Basil’s Cathedral and the wonderful architecture of GUM. Looking out the other window was the Hotel Rossiya, which was interesting in its own huge, modern way. The only downside to the fab location occurred whenever we opened the window: we were on a main road, and on the other side of the river (and over the bridge) there was six lanes of traffic, seemingly 24 hours a day. It was too noisy and stinky to have the windows open for long but the view of the far side of the Kremlin and down the river was enough to brave the lead-petrol stench for photo sessions.
It was about 7pm by this point so we quickly settled into the room and had showers – lovely, hot, powerful showers, then went off into the scary Moscow night to find some food. We were both quite tired (having been up from 3am) so we didn’t want to go too far. My assortment of guidebooks and internet research had suggested two options: an “eclectic” one pretty much next door to the hotel and “the city’s best Italian” a short walk away. We tried the “eclectic” one first but after an initial glance at the menu (and accompanying “eeep!”s) and speaking to the maitre d’-type, we decided it wasn’t really a first-meal-in-scary-language-country place. We then went off in search of the Italian – which for an unexplained reason was called Dorian Grey.
We got a bit lost on the way there because I didn’t have an exact reference for its location but we found it in the end (on Kadashevkaya, on the bank of the river, just Kamenny bridge) and while the waiting staff didn’t speak any English, there was an English-language menu and they were willing to help us out and practise our quickly learnt phrases. (Because it was an Italian restaurant – with Italian names for the dishes – we could have managed without an English-language menu but it was still welcome.). If all that wasn’t luck enough, we were about to get luckier: the food was delicious. John had what can only been described as an aubergine lasagne thing to start while I threw my vegetarianism out of the okho, and had an Italian meats selection (including the spiciest salami I’ve ever had and the lovely sweet ham I developed a thing for when we were in Venice). We both had pasta as a main: John had tortellini with cream and sour cream while I went for macroni arrabiata. The best dish out of the four was John’s starter and we’re going to try to work out a recipe for something similar to make at home. All in all, it was a wonderful first meal: not too stressful, not too far from the hotel and really rather delicious.
We went back to the hotel when we finished: we were tired, it had been raining and we didn’t know enough about the area to go wandering around in the dark. Then we quickly discovered another ace thing about the hotel room: a very, very comfortable bed.
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