Ahhh back to the land of sensible shoes!

We're Back!

Whew - my heels, ankles, knees, calves, thighs etc etc are KILLING me today!
(oh and in regards to the post title - Russian women love their heels - WOW. We saw TONS of women out seeing the tourist sites - in HUGE heels - my feet were killing me in my Pumas! It was shocking! Mini skirt and huge heels are not my idea of holiday clothing:)

We walked and walked and walked - but WOW what a great weekend:)

The flights were long - or felt like it at least. We flew to Frankfurt (1 1/2 hours) and then BARELY made our next flight to Moscow because of delays out of London. Wow that was CLOSE (we RAN and only JUST made it!!!) - then flew the final 2 1/2 hours on to Moscow.

OH MY GOSH the queue (line) at Moscow airport for customs - wow - just wow. I have never seen such insane chaos in my LIFE! (it was even worse than the crowd of people and no signs in Zimbabwe)! There were no lines really - but sort of 'group lines.' However the locals thought nothing of just walking past all of us who had been standing there for AGES and going straight to the front!

When finally got almost to the front a Russian lady from the line over decided to join our line and stuck her shoulder in front me of me. Ummmm NO! I put my shoulder in front of her, and then wedged myself in behind the American couple in front of us so she couldn't push in front - CHEEKY! When we finally got to the front and we were up next, a lady from the next line RAN up to customs control before we could step forward!!! So once she was done I ran for the counter with Murray before someone ELSE could cut in front. Wow. So that was our introduction to the push to the front of wait in line for hours Russian way or queueing.

We got a cab into the city and our cab driver FINALLY found the hotel (drama!) and then tried to cheat us out of our change. Thankfully Murray sat it out til the guy ' oh - found some change.' The hotel was quite nice - but it was straight to bed for us - even though we had gone ahead 3 hours in time zones, we were still exhausted! Seeing St. Basil's lit up on our drive to the hotel though was SOOOOOOOOOO cool!

I'll go through all the details & stories later this week once we get photos uploaded. But in summary - it was great! Probably the most challenging trip we have ever taken (the Cyrillic alphabet is SO confusing!!) but it was such an amazing experience:)