Minor Mishap #9

On the Saturday before we left St Petersburg, Mum was looking through the trip notes and noticed that our flight in to Moscow arrived at a different Airport than where we were supposed to fly out (to South America). We didn't panic, because our travel agent hadn't pointed it out to us, so we thought it likely that they were just two names for international and domestic terminals.

That afternoon I showed Katya, our tour leader, and asked what was the best way to travel between the terminals... and her face dropped. Apparently the Airports were on opposite sides of the city. We thus started to panic.

For those of you who have not been to Russia before here are the locations of the two airports:

Straight line distance between these is 60 km.

Katya suggested a taxi would be the best way, but would be expensive, and luckily we were travelling on a Sunday, since during the week it could take up to 6 hours crossing the city. We went to bed feeling a little nervous.

As it happened, our flight from St Petersburg arrived an hour early in Sheremetyevo and I immediately went to the transfer desk to ask about the best way to get to Domodedovo. The two attendants exchanged disbelieving looks, which further plummeted my confidence. However, they gave me comprehensive information on catching a bus, metro then train.

Luckily passport control was unattended, so we saved another hour there. Outside I asked about the cost of a taxi - 5000 Rubels (about $250!). This pretty much made our decision to take the public transport. All up we had 3 hours to get to Domodedovo.

It took an hour on the bus to the metro because traffic was bad due to rain. The nausea started to rise. The metro took 30 minutes and the express train to the airport took a further hour. So we ended up making it with 30 minutes to spare. Easy... right? Total cost - 500 Rubels ($25).

After checking in, our nausea had lifted and we even had time to get something to eat.

l

R

x

and Judy