From Chicago to Moscow
Ok so we FINALLY have internet, so here's all the posts I have been writing in Word....
t’s about 4:30 in the morning and I’m a little sick of getting kicked in the gut and elbowed in the face so I decided to get up and fill you in on all the details of our trip so far. Brent and I are not used to sleeping on a queen-sized bed, never mind adding a Wiry Little Person in the mix…
Ok, so here we go.
On Sunday, we left for the airport at about 1PM. I figured we should be there about 3 hours early, and since we had to change our tickets, we should be there even earlier, right? So we stopped for dinner and coffee in Milwaukee but got to the airport at about 5:00. LOT Polish Air was way at the end of the terminal and it appeared to be closed. All of the other terminals had long lines but LOT didn’t even have their lights on. Then we saw the sign saying we could not check in until 6:30. So we settled in our seats and waited. As soon as I saw someone come from the back, I popped up and rushed to the counter and switched our ticket over. That came off without any problems, thank goodness. When the line opened up, we checked our luggage and went over to the gate to wait some more. I beeped at the detectors and the TSA people pulled me aside to be patted down but we both thought it was my necklace so I got let through.
Then we waited some more.
The Chicago airport is really pretty cool. There are lots of arial pictures of the city, and walking past all the different airlines is like the “It’s a Small World” ride at Disney land.
We boarded the plane about 8:15 and thankfully had a middle row of three to ourselves. Actually, we accidentally sat in the wrong row, but it all worked out, as the plane was not very full.
LOT is a nice airline. I guess all international airlines are about the same. The seats were comfortable enough, and putting up the arm rests made a nice bench to put all of our stuff. The food was pretty good. I had rice with vegetables and tomato sauce - then a small salad and fruit cup. Brent had the same except with chicken. The nice thing about (me) being in the exact middle seat is that I could get water from both sides if I pretended like the other stewardess had not served me yet :)
We both only slept about 2 hours and we arrived at Warsaw at 2PM Monday, Poland time. We got off the plane and had to take a bus to the terminal. Thankfully it was not too cold, but I was glad to have my coat. It was slushy though.
Since we were flying a different airline the second half of the trip, we had to get our boarding passes there. We didn’t see an area for Aeroflot (Russian Airline) so we went to their office to ask. They said it would be there two hours before boarding, so we’d have to wait. We went to the cafe area to get some food and had a small sandwich and some coffee. Thankfully they took Visa, because we didn’t really want to change dollars to Zlotchkys for just a few hour layover. After that we waited some more. Later on we went back for dinner and had split a plate of potato dumplings (for me) and chicken curry quiche (for Brent). And a Coke Light.
The Warsaw Airport was small, but pretty nice too. I could walk around the whole thing in just 5 minutes. There was no shopping and it was a little boring. I wanted to go outside, but didn’t know what kind of problems we’d encounter, so we stayed securely in our seats.
So then we went through security (I remembered to take off my necklace), and saw what we had been missing. The duty free shops. There were mini-marts, jewelry stores, art, watches, cosmetics, lots of alcohol, chocolate, and other food. Lots to look at. But eventually we went to our boarding area. Thankfully that guy from the office remembered us, because he made sure we knew what was going on the whole time. All of the instructions were in Russian or Polish, and when they spoke English you could barely tell the difference because the accent was so strong.
We finally saw everyone getting in line at our terminal (they were all together in one big room) and we got up too. The guy from the office informed us that we were landing at terminal one instead of two, but we didn’t think anything of it and just kept going.
Aeroflot is not the same as every other international airline. I guessed we’d use a smaller plane since it was just a two hour jump to Moscow, but … yeah. Brent is 6’2” and he barely had any place to put his knees. Again we had three seats for the two of us and we were incredibly thankful for that fact. It was beyond cramped. The plane also was kind of dingy and shaky. But we got there safely and landed in Moscow at 00:05 Tuesday morning. We had to take a bus to the terminal again, and by here it was pretty cold, and snowing.
I’ve heard that SVO airport is very busy with long lines and people shoving and lots of waiting, but if you want to avoid all of that, just get there at midnight. There was no one there except the 30 or so people from our plane. It was kind of eerie. We had a little problem with not filling our our paperwork correctly, but it was easily fixed. By the time we collected our luggage and figured out where to go, we were the only ones left. There was one point where we were standing at customs deciding on if we had anything to declare and the three Russian officials were staring back at us. The sign on the wall said we’d be prosecuted if we lied, so we hesitated for a moment but just walked right through with no questions asked. We walked through the doors out into the main Moscow airport, expecting to see our driver smiling and waiting for us. Nope, no one.
t’s about 4:30 in the morning and I’m a little sick of getting kicked in the gut and elbowed in the face so I decided to get up and fill you in on all the details of our trip so far. Brent and I are not used to sleeping on a queen-sized bed, never mind adding a Wiry Little Person in the mix…
Ok, so here we go.
On Sunday, we left for the airport at about 1PM. I figured we should be there about 3 hours early, and since we had to change our tickets, we should be there even earlier, right? So we stopped for dinner and coffee in Milwaukee but got to the airport at about 5:00. LOT Polish Air was way at the end of the terminal and it appeared to be closed. All of the other terminals had long lines but LOT didn’t even have their lights on. Then we saw the sign saying we could not check in until 6:30. So we settled in our seats and waited. As soon as I saw someone come from the back, I popped up and rushed to the counter and switched our ticket over. That came off without any problems, thank goodness. When the line opened up, we checked our luggage and went over to the gate to wait some more. I beeped at the detectors and the TSA people pulled me aside to be patted down but we both thought it was my necklace so I got let through.
Then we waited some more.
The Chicago airport is really pretty cool. There are lots of arial pictures of the city, and walking past all the different airlines is like the “It’s a Small World” ride at Disney land.
We boarded the plane about 8:15 and thankfully had a middle row of three to ourselves. Actually, we accidentally sat in the wrong row, but it all worked out, as the plane was not very full.
LOT is a nice airline. I guess all international airlines are about the same. The seats were comfortable enough, and putting up the arm rests made a nice bench to put all of our stuff. The food was pretty good. I had rice with vegetables and tomato sauce - then a small salad and fruit cup. Brent had the same except with chicken. The nice thing about (me) being in the exact middle seat is that I could get water from both sides if I pretended like the other stewardess had not served me yet :)
We both only slept about 2 hours and we arrived at Warsaw at 2PM Monday, Poland time. We got off the plane and had to take a bus to the terminal. Thankfully it was not too cold, but I was glad to have my coat. It was slushy though.
Since we were flying a different airline the second half of the trip, we had to get our boarding passes there. We didn’t see an area for Aeroflot (Russian Airline) so we went to their office to ask. They said it would be there two hours before boarding, so we’d have to wait. We went to the cafe area to get some food and had a small sandwich and some coffee. Thankfully they took Visa, because we didn’t really want to change dollars to Zlotchkys for just a few hour layover. After that we waited some more. Later on we went back for dinner and had split a plate of potato dumplings (for me) and chicken curry quiche (for Brent). And a Coke Light.
The Warsaw Airport was small, but pretty nice too. I could walk around the whole thing in just 5 minutes. There was no shopping and it was a little boring. I wanted to go outside, but didn’t know what kind of problems we’d encounter, so we stayed securely in our seats.
So then we went through security (I remembered to take off my necklace), and saw what we had been missing. The duty free shops. There were mini-marts, jewelry stores, art, watches, cosmetics, lots of alcohol, chocolate, and other food. Lots to look at. But eventually we went to our boarding area. Thankfully that guy from the office remembered us, because he made sure we knew what was going on the whole time. All of the instructions were in Russian or Polish, and when they spoke English you could barely tell the difference because the accent was so strong.
We finally saw everyone getting in line at our terminal (they were all together in one big room) and we got up too. The guy from the office informed us that we were landing at terminal one instead of two, but we didn’t think anything of it and just kept going.
Aeroflot is not the same as every other international airline. I guessed we’d use a smaller plane since it was just a two hour jump to Moscow, but … yeah. Brent is 6’2” and he barely had any place to put his knees. Again we had three seats for the two of us and we were incredibly thankful for that fact. It was beyond cramped. The plane also was kind of dingy and shaky. But we got there safely and landed in Moscow at 00:05 Tuesday morning. We had to take a bus to the terminal again, and by here it was pretty cold, and snowing.
I’ve heard that SVO airport is very busy with long lines and people shoving and lots of waiting, but if you want to avoid all of that, just get there at midnight. There was no one there except the 30 or so people from our plane. It was kind of eerie. We had a little problem with not filling our our paperwork correctly, but it was easily fixed. By the time we collected our luggage and figured out where to go, we were the only ones left. There was one point where we were standing at customs deciding on if we had anything to declare and the three Russian officials were staring back at us. The sign on the wall said we’d be prosecuted if we lied, so we hesitated for a moment but just walked right through with no questions asked. We walked through the doors out into the main Moscow airport, expecting to see our driver smiling and waiting for us. Nope, no one.
posted by Tracy at 10:24 AM
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