arrival survival
travelling with children, even wonderful
children like ours, is really
really
tough and exhausting. but we all survived and made it to our lovely and
rapacious hotel in Moscow.
There is something amusing about our
travels with kids. We reserved a ride to Logan Airport to begin our adventure,
and I requested a minivan. I was told we'd get a station wagon, and there'd be a
surcharge.
So this guy shows up a bit late with a small station wagon, and by the time we got it packed the undercarriage was nearly scraping the street. We had to hold on to the kids because there wasn't even room for a car seat (this, as any parent knows, is the naily-est of nail-biting time). But we made it to Logan on time, waited and made it through security, and then onto the plane without much fuss.
British Airways reminded us all of the old days of air travel: the service and food were great. Our seats weren't all that comfortable, but all in all we were well taken care of. The problem was the kids, who didn't fall asleep until about 10:00 p.m. (our flight left the ground at 6:00 p.m.), and then slept only fitfully. Other minor problems were that we couldn't plug our laptops in because the little outlets for them are reserved for business-class on up, not for economy. So instead I watched a movie called "Assault on Precinct 13," with Ethan Hawke and Lawrence Fishburne. Not an awful movie but nothing profound in it either.
After what seemed like forever we arrived at London's Heathrow airport where, exhausted and slightly slimy from the air travel, we collapsed for three hours while waiting for our connecting flight to Moscow:
Heathrow's terminal 1 has a "smoking area" where all the tobacco addicts (one pities them) are corralled. I think the idea was to minimize the smoke in the airport, but the tiny semi-enclosed space actually acts as a kind of giant air un-freshener for the entire terminal area. Yuck.
Our flight to Moscow was uneventful and very much like the trip to London: no sleep, uncomfortable seats, great food and service. We arrived in Moscow about 4:30 p.m. Moscow time, and then the fun began with customs forms and finding our ride to the hotel.
Cab rides from the airport are expensive, so most travelers arrange rides in advance like we did. Unfortunately, our ride didn't show up, and because we'd only just arrived we'd had no time to convert our mobile phones to Moscow's system. Monica eventually got a nice lady to help and we found a Marriott Hotel person to help arrange transport. This time the ride was a bigger minivan, but still not big enough for ingrid to have her car seat. We survived the trip to the hotel just fine though. The streets as we neared the city center and the whole vibe reminded us most of a kind of cross between Mexico City and Barcelona (probably more the latter than the former). The area was so thickly forested that I began to wonder if the reason Moscow's princes (and not Kiev's) successfully defended Europe from the Mongols-Tatars was due to these trees (Ukraine doesn't have the same density as Moscow), which would have interfered with the effectiveness of large formations of light cavalry (there's a geeky note for you!).
Anyway our hotel was/is lovely, but everything is fantastically expensive here: a bottle of evian costs $9.50; and so on. The food has been great and the service too. Today our goals were to get our phones up and running and to make sure that our ride to our apartment, which we're moving into tomorrow, actually meets us here at the hotel. Our apartment supposedly comes with unlimited free international phone calls and fast internet (we'll see). We went to Tsoom (the famous central department store which used to be called Goom) and found a person whose English was as bad as our Russian. Phillip helped us get mobile phones up and running and so now we feel like real Muscovites (although to truly fit in Ivan would have to get black pointy-toed shoes and Monica would need pumps and trashier more tightly-fitted clothes). I found a small grocery store where we were able to dazzle the clerks with our Russian language skills and buy bread, cheese, and milk and juice.
The only scary thing about Moscow so far is the traffic: adults will do fine with the fact that traffic laws are, for Muscovites, mere guidelines rather than hard and fast rules, but with children like Sam and Ingrid (who truly love to run around), it's scary as hell. Here's a photo of Sam after returning to our hotel (Aurora) from our successful first Moscow outing.
We had a swim and I tried a sauna (I now know that a sauna is a profoundly social kind of thing: very boring sitting there by myself sweating). Sam loves to swim now (he's getting better and braver by degrees) and I think the chlorine might be good for my eye (I have pink eye of all things if you can imagine it).
Mom is holding up just fine and is, as usual, a pleasure to travel with. We were sad to learn this morning (we woke at 1:30 p.m. Moscow time!) that Mom had to share all the screaming and carrying on from Ingrid and Sam.
They're asleep now.
With any luck I can keep this blog running tomorrow night. It's tough to find the time though because the kids aren't sleeping well or regularly yet; which means we aren't either.
Well, that's all for now. We send our love from Russia.
So this guy shows up a bit late with a small station wagon, and by the time we got it packed the undercarriage was nearly scraping the street. We had to hold on to the kids because there wasn't even room for a car seat (this, as any parent knows, is the naily-est of nail-biting time). But we made it to Logan on time, waited and made it through security, and then onto the plane without much fuss.
British Airways reminded us all of the old days of air travel: the service and food were great. Our seats weren't all that comfortable, but all in all we were well taken care of. The problem was the kids, who didn't fall asleep until about 10:00 p.m. (our flight left the ground at 6:00 p.m.), and then slept only fitfully. Other minor problems were that we couldn't plug our laptops in because the little outlets for them are reserved for business-class on up, not for economy. So instead I watched a movie called "Assault on Precinct 13," with Ethan Hawke and Lawrence Fishburne. Not an awful movie but nothing profound in it either.
After what seemed like forever we arrived at London's Heathrow airport where, exhausted and slightly slimy from the air travel, we collapsed for three hours while waiting for our connecting flight to Moscow:
Heathrow's terminal 1 has a "smoking area" where all the tobacco addicts (one pities them) are corralled. I think the idea was to minimize the smoke in the airport, but the tiny semi-enclosed space actually acts as a kind of giant air un-freshener for the entire terminal area. Yuck.
Our flight to Moscow was uneventful and very much like the trip to London: no sleep, uncomfortable seats, great food and service. We arrived in Moscow about 4:30 p.m. Moscow time, and then the fun began with customs forms and finding our ride to the hotel.
Cab rides from the airport are expensive, so most travelers arrange rides in advance like we did. Unfortunately, our ride didn't show up, and because we'd only just arrived we'd had no time to convert our mobile phones to Moscow's system. Monica eventually got a nice lady to help and we found a Marriott Hotel person to help arrange transport. This time the ride was a bigger minivan, but still not big enough for ingrid to have her car seat. We survived the trip to the hotel just fine though. The streets as we neared the city center and the whole vibe reminded us most of a kind of cross between Mexico City and Barcelona (probably more the latter than the former). The area was so thickly forested that I began to wonder if the reason Moscow's princes (and not Kiev's) successfully defended Europe from the Mongols-Tatars was due to these trees (Ukraine doesn't have the same density as Moscow), which would have interfered with the effectiveness of large formations of light cavalry (there's a geeky note for you!).
Anyway our hotel was/is lovely, but everything is fantastically expensive here: a bottle of evian costs $9.50; and so on. The food has been great and the service too. Today our goals were to get our phones up and running and to make sure that our ride to our apartment, which we're moving into tomorrow, actually meets us here at the hotel. Our apartment supposedly comes with unlimited free international phone calls and fast internet (we'll see). We went to Tsoom (the famous central department store which used to be called Goom) and found a person whose English was as bad as our Russian. Phillip helped us get mobile phones up and running and so now we feel like real Muscovites (although to truly fit in Ivan would have to get black pointy-toed shoes and Monica would need pumps and trashier more tightly-fitted clothes). I found a small grocery store where we were able to dazzle the clerks with our Russian language skills and buy bread, cheese, and milk and juice.
The only scary thing about Moscow so far is the traffic: adults will do fine with the fact that traffic laws are, for Muscovites, mere guidelines rather than hard and fast rules, but with children like Sam and Ingrid (who truly love to run around), it's scary as hell. Here's a photo of Sam after returning to our hotel (Aurora) from our successful first Moscow outing.
We had a swim and I tried a sauna (I now know that a sauna is a profoundly social kind of thing: very boring sitting there by myself sweating). Sam loves to swim now (he's getting better and braver by degrees) and I think the chlorine might be good for my eye (I have pink eye of all things if you can imagine it).
Mom is holding up just fine and is, as usual, a pleasure to travel with. We were sad to learn this morning (we woke at 1:30 p.m. Moscow time!) that Mom had to share all the screaming and carrying on from Ingrid and Sam.
They're asleep now.
With any luck I can keep this blog running tomorrow night. It's tough to find the time though because the kids aren't sleeping well or regularly yet; which means we aren't either.
Well, that's all for now. We send our love from Russia.
Posted: Fri - June 3, 2005 at 02:03 PM
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Published On: Jun 03, 2005 02:24 PM
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Published On: Jun 03, 2005 02:24 PM