Boy what a difference your time of arrival makes! We landed at a bit before 8 pm, exited the plane and lugged our stuff down a series of steps. No escalators here. We then emerged into a totally chaotic scene at passport control - masses of people and no discernible line. We finally made it through after 1 1/2 hours, whereas Andi and Doug breezed through earlier. A word of advice - travel with a baby or pretend you are pregnant and you can cut the line!

Since our plane had landed so long ago we didn't really know where to look for our bag, but luckily we spotted it lying on the floor in the middle of the chaos and proceeded en masse through customs and found our driver. I was surprised he was still waiting! Then we had to lug everything down several flights of stairs to his car and off we went in a nice Mercedes for a 45 minute drive to the Park Hyatt. Andi has described the drive, but the city looks very grand, especially with all the buildings lit up at night.

Definitely sticker shock here. A basic small pour of a so-so Chilean chardonnay last night was 500 rubles. Just had 2
cups of coffee and the total was 580 rubles - about $20.

The four of us are winging it today and exploring Red Square and the Kremlin and things walkable from the hotel. Tomorrow the four of us have a private tour booked and then will be dropped at the boat for embarkation. We will have two more days of tours in Moscow with AMA so we should be fairly well versed in Moscow sightseeing.