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Saturday our biggest challenge was getting from the Airport to our accommodation at Izmayloskaya Park. We weren’t too keen to pay the extortionate Taxi fares so we hopped on a bus at the Airport. Climbing aboard we said to the driver “Metro” and I think he nodded so we were onto a winner. However it seemed that what I expected to be a 25 minute ride to the closest Metro was taking more like an hour. Susan started to get a bit apprehensive and enquired in her best Russian if we were on the right bus. Each person we asked said “Da” but it can be a bit perturbing when you cant read any of the signs and don’t even know what a Metro station looks like.
We did get there eventually but the Metro was like a completely different world to the London and Paris tube we had been used to.

Getting a Metro ticket seems deigned to imitate the old food shortages in Russia used to have in the supermarkets. We waited patiently in a long muddled queue not quite knowing if the cantankerous babushka like teller would allow us to purchase our 5 trip card. I was also acutely aware of the Russian Policemen loitering around the cashier and occasionally dragging people into the back room. I didn’t know what you had to do to be taken there it seemed jumping the ticket barrier without paying wasn’t enough. I knew however, I didn’t want to find out.

Travelling on tube, Russian might as well have been Martian. Not reading Cyrillic we hoped on the drab soviet train hoping it was going south and started counting the ornate marble stations into town. Incredibly we made it to the right interchange and even onto the correct train going North East to Izmayloskaya Park or Partizanskaya (don’t ask for the Cyrillic). Getting on the right train was not only taxing because of the language of the signs though. It seems even time you are at a station the signs are in blue which is a bit confusing if you are on the red line (which on the platform have blue signs in either direction) and want to change to the blue line (also with blue signs).

Anyway we got to our gigantic (8000 bed) hotel which was built for the 1980 Olympics fine.
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