August 3 – Train ride to Moscow:

This morning we ate breakfast, packed and prepared for our train ride to Moscow. Alan needed to pick up his replacement Russian visa. He and Masha took off for the appropriate government office and Joyce worked on including our purchases in our luggage. Since we had completed most of the packing the night before, it was a small job. The Schaeffers decided to go out exploring. Joyce was invited to go with them, but she declined, as she was anxious about the possibility that Alan wouldn’t get the visa so she stayed in the room. She read a book she brought, wrote some blog entries, watched the Olympics and exchanged large ruble bills for smaller ones so we would have the appropriate bills for Masha’s tip. As time went by, Joyce became more nervous about a possible glitch in getting Alan’s visa. She was very happy to see him and the visa at about 11:45 a.m. We left for the train station at 12:30 p.m.

During the ride to the train station, Masha asked us questions about what we had liked about our time in Saint Petersburg. We all had a good time talking about our favorite parts, what surprised us and what we learned about Russia.

The train station was very crowded, but following Masha we maneuvered through the people. We walked up a long ramp pulling our suitcases. At about the middle of the ramp, Joyce was beginning to falter, so Jon picked up the smaller suitcase that was balanced on the bigger on and carried it. After sending our luggage through the x-ray machine we made our way to our train. 

Our train was one of the newer high speed trains the covered the distance between Saint Petersburg and Moscow in 4 hours 30 minutes instead of the 8-9 hours it had taken Jon and Sandi 15 years ago when they adopted Paul. We said our good-byes to Masha and boarded the train.

We were immediately in confusion as we didn’t know how to find our seats since we couldn’t read the ticket. Sandi went to a train attendant who point to the appropriate place on the ticket. We still were confused as it looked like we weren’t sitting together. We sort of stood in the aisle and I’m sure the people behind up were thinking “silly (or worse) Americans. It was also difficult to figure out where we should put our large luggage, but we finally figured out that there was some space behind the seats, in addition to the overhead storage.

We finally figured out Sandi, Paul and Sydney were sitting in four seats facing each other with a table in between with Jon across the aisle. Joyce was the seat behind Jon and Alan was seated behind Joyce.  Joyce wasn't real happy about the seating arrangements, since both Alan and Joyce had seats next to them, but they were occupied by different people throughout the trip.  At least we both had windows and Alan had a lot of time to finish blogging about his own private adventures in St. Petersburg.

There was a lot of interesting countryside to see throughout the trip.  The landscape seemed pretty flat for the most part, with a few valleys around some broad rivers, and lots of pine trees of various sorts.  The bigger rivers always seemed to have several people swimming in them.  We passed a number of villages and made about 4 stops to load and unload passengers.  When we came to a town where we stopped, there were often high rise apartments, usually at least 10 stories with several grouped together.  They seemed a bit strange and out of place to us.  When we did see a small village, the houses looked sort of run down from the outside, but each seemed to be surrounded by a fence, and there was usually a garden.

When we arrived in Moscow, our Moscow guide, Tatiana, was just outside the train, so we didn't have to do much looking.  She guided us through the train station, one of several in just a few blocks of Moscow, to our waiting van.  We could see right away that the city was different than St. Petersburg.  The streets were much wider and the traffic seemed faster, more like the US.  Our hotel was kind of on a back street, across from the Ghanian embassay.  It was clearly an older hotel, but our accommodations were still quite nice.  Even better, they supplied us with as much filtered, good water as we wanted, and the air conditioning worked well!  The Schaeffer room was a suite, but it was pretty crowded for them.  The Welch's had to haul their suitcases up some steps to get to their room, but the rooms also had internet access provided in them...another bonus.

In Moscow, our travel agent had arranged for meals in the hotel because of the cost of food.  It was a nice meal, and afterwards the men talked the women into a quick stroll down Arbat Street, very near the hotel, just to get a lay of the land.  Arbat Street was formerly a busy street, but it has been converted into a pedestrian mall, with many vendors, street performers, and of course, souvenir shops!