Travel Log: Day 1

Lesson learned: Don't change planes in Moscow.

This trip was more affordable because we had enough SkyMiles in Ryan's account for one round-trip ticket. Travelling on a 'free' ticket is a challenge though because you have to be extremely flexible with flight choices and you have to book your flights 331 days in advance. We flew Delta from SLC to ATL to SVO and there we had to change to Aeroflot Russian Airlines to fly into St. Petersburg. Signage in airports is horrible, Sheremevo is no exception. When we got off the flight, a sign said that Aeroflot passengers with less than a 4 hour connection were to go to a different section of the airport for passport processing. When we got to that location, there was no one there, then a couple minutes later an airport employee came up and said we were in the wrong place. Since we came off the Delta flight, we had to go downstairs, claim all our baggage and go through customs. So we did that. Then as we're wondering what we need to claim on our customs form - that the sign says in Russian that we need to fill out 2 of (it doesn't say that in English), we spend another few minutes. As I'm a people watcher, I'm noticing that everyone who goes to the red line (stuff to claim for customs) is sent to the green line (nothing to claim), I tell this to Ryan but he wants to continue filling out the form - he's dealt with the Russian red tape before. Then as he's translating for a minister from a church in Texas who is trying to make a claim on a missing bag, the minister tells us that unless he has a lot of cash, he always goes through the green line. We go through the green line. Then we are met by a crush of taxi drivers. Long story short: we are convinced to pay a guy $45 for the drive to the other terminal where we are barely in time to make our flight. Once again I say, don't change planes in Moscow!