An outline of our Russian trip

Now that we're back and have posted about some individual subjects, let me tell you what our schedule was, and what we did each day.

Monday, April 25: We leave from Detroit, fairly late, heading to Amsterdam.  The flight is eight hours, give-or-take.

Tuesday, April 26: We arrive in Amsterdam, have a 3-hour layover, and take a second flight to St. Petersburg.  We get through customs, and a woman from our agency meets us in the airport.  She helps us change our currency and then calls for our driver.  We're driven from the airport to our hotel, the Brothers Karamazov.  We check in, take a walk, an opt to eat in the hotel restaurant.  Luckily, it's pretty decent, and the menus are in English.  By now it's pretty late, and neither of us slept well on the plane on Monday night, so it's time to turn in.

Wednesday, April 27: Another day of travel; we need to get to Kotlas.  After breakfast in the hotel, we're driven to the airport and check in for a flight from St. Petersburg to Arkhangelsk, the half-way point.  It's not the same airport, though: it turns out St. Petersburg has two airports, one international and the second primarily domestic.  We arrive at the domestic airport, check in, and eventually make it onto the flight.  The Arkhangelsk-to-Kotlas flight is late in the day, so in Arkhangelsk we are met by another driver, and Dimitry, another representative of our agency.  Dimitry will accompany us to Kotlas and the orphanage.  Charmingly, he calls us Andre and Tereza.  We're OK with that.

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Dimitry's a busy guy, so he stashes us in the lobby of the Pur-Navolok Hotel for the afternoon.  It's quiet and comfortable, and probably better than hanging out in the airport, so we're also OK with that.  He returns at 4:00, and Dr. Sofia is with him.  Sofia's a pediatrician based in St. Petersburg who acts as an independent consultant for families like us, providing an unbiased medical opinion of children's health.  We've asked her along to examine Elena.

We drive to the airport and get on a rather small plane to Kotlas.  Once there, we're met by yet another driver and head for the hotel.  We check in, and Sofia invites us along for supper at the restaurant down the street.  And it's a good thing, too: here the menus are in Russian only.  By the time we're done eating, it's 10:30, and we're exhausted.

Thursday, April 28: This is the day we finally meet Elena.  We visit the orphanage twice: once in the morning and once in the afternoon.  This is the whole point of why were here, and since it deserves a little more attention, I've detailed what we did on Thursday in a previous post.  After we leave the orphanage in the afternoon, we return to the hotel, then have a little time to walk around Kotlas before returning to the same restuarant we ate at the day.

Friday, April 29: Today we go back to St. Petersburg.  Our flight from Kotlas to Arkhangelsk leaves early, so we're out of the hotel at 5:40 in the morning.  Dimitry has already left Kotlas via train, but Sofia is escorting a little boy (one of Elena's dormmates) to Arkhangelsk, so we stop by the orphanage on our way out of town.

When we get to Arkhangelsk, we have something like an eleven-hour layover until we can catch a flight to St. Petersburg.  To fill time, we've arranged to visit the architecture museum at Malye Korely, so we're met again by a driver at the airport.  This time it's only the three of us, and the driver's English is only marginally better than our Russian.  However, we get to Malye Korely and spend an hour-an-a-half or so walking around.

We still have all afternoon to kill, which we spend hanging out at the airport.  Finally our flight is ready and we head back to St. Petersburg, there to be met by the same driver, who takes us once more to the Brothers Karamazov.

Saturday, April 30: We decide to spend one day on a guided tour.  We hire Alex, who comes recommended by our adoption agency.  She drives us around the city, pointing out a lot of the older buildings, some of which date back to the time of Peter the Great.  We also take a tour through newer residential neighborhoods, to get a feel for the city.  A personalized guided tour isn't cheap, but it does add a lot of value to the trip, and it allows us to get a better feel for the city than we otherwise would.  At the end of it, the trip isn't really for us, you know?

Sunday, May 1: It's May Day!  We're going to the Hermitage, which, Alex has told us the day previously, is best visited as early as possible to minimize time spent in line.  We plan on getting there 30 minutes before opening time, but lingering over breakfast and detouring excessively to avoid the May Day parade route gets us there 30 minutes after opening instead.  Still, we wind up spending only 45 minutes or so in line, so it's not so bad.

We skip the most popular exhibits, and start with the prehistoric relics in the basement.  Pretty cool, and nearly deserted.  We eventually get up to see the Picassos, Renoirs, and Matisses. Also pretty cool.  We stay until 3:00 or so, then do some shopping on the way back to the hotel.

Monday, May 2: Today we're off to the Russian Museum.  Like the Hermitage, much of their collection is 18th and 19th century paintings, but they have a really interesting collection of early Russian Orthodox iconography, and an insanely great collection of Russian folk art.  To top it off, they had temporary exhibition on "Russian Heroes and Villians," covering portraits of Russian leaders from the tsars through the prestnt time.  The Soviet-era propaganda items were really interesting; they included everyting from oddball posters (verbatim title: "Let us build a fleet of blimps and name them after Lenin") to magnificent oil paintings in Renaissance style of Stalin at party meetings.

Tuesday, May 3: It's time to go home.  Remember St. Petersburg has two airports?  We're dropped off at the international one.  This is where we find out that the other airport--the domestic one--also has a few international flights, a fact that had previously escaped both us and our now-long-gone driver.  Luckily, one of the Russian security officers asked us what flight we were on, and helped us figure out why the Paris flight we were supposed to be on didn't appear on the departure boards at the international airport, and did in fact leave from the other airport.  Totally above the call of duty, and  pro-active to boot.

In any case, we take a taxi to the other airport and find our flight without any problem.  We get to Paris on time, and although it takes over an hour to get to our next flight (Charles de Gaulle is pretty spread out), we have a two-hour layover so no problem.  The flight home is on Air France, which not only has better food than our domestic American airlines (fresh mini-baguettes; yum), but also wider coach seats and about 2" more leg room.

And now, we're back in Detroit.  It's 5:00, and 17 hours after we left St. Petersburg, but it's good to be home.

And we only have to do this twice more.