Arriving in the Motherland

Conference centre where our apartment is!

Well, finally we made it to Russia at 9pm local time. The airport is quite stark and everyone tries to squish onto a small lift to leave....I had a pram so I just attacked people's ankles till they let me through. Already it is obvious that the system here is every man for themselves...no polite British queuing. Unfortunately when we came out of the airport it was dark and so we didn't really get an idea of what the area was like. As we drove towards Moscow, the suburbs are made up of great concrete tower blocks full of millions of people and very much like the idea you have of communist Russia. The roads seem to also have the every man for themselves policy which is going to take a while to get used to - especially when you realise that you haven't taken a breath  for 10 minutes whilst holding on for dear life. As you drive into the centre of Moscow the buildings become much more awe inspiring and you realise what a marked difference there is between the suburbs and down town.

When we arrived at the hotel/conference centre the receptionist didn't speak much English and so we muddled through and finally made it to our apartment. The apartment is great but has stairs! I thought i'd escaped stairs when leaving Britain but it seems Arthur can terrorise me with stair climbing for a little longer. We realised immediately that we'd need water for his bottle as you can't drink the water out of the tap - everything was shut so we called room service for 4 small bottles of water and 4 small bottles of beer - okay - first mistake. When the boy brought it up it was a £50 bill - what the f*ck! It was the most expensive bottle of milk Arthur had ever had. We drank the beers like they were gold dust - no more room service for us!

Our sitting room

All in all, we had survived, arrived and been stung by inflated prices....tomorrow we would begin our Moscow adventure for real.