Moscow

Moscow
We are professionals at arriving into a city so early stores are closed, it's still dark, and in Moscow's case really damn cold.
Making our way to the hostel we conquered the subway and the Russian streets. The lady at the hostel wasn't all to pleased when we arrived at 5 am when our check in was at noon. We waited around, checked in and with a snack and a nap we were off exploring. Red Square was our first stop and was simply amazing.



After walking though some city parks we retreated to the hostel for some much needed sleep. In the morning we took a free tour around Moscow. He showed us many of the famous churches, shared stories of Russia's past and most importantly spoke English. We were, however, the only Americans on the tour...









Back in our room we planned out some of our trip in our books and online before cooking dinner. With eggs and spaghetti we managed to make, in our eyes, a 5 star meal before falling asleep. That sinking feeling of knowing you are late when you wake up is unmistakeable, and with a 200$ train ticket on the line it hits a lot harder. Packing our bags in record time we head up to reception to check out and print out our train tickets. Checking out proved to be swift and simple but as soon as we mentioned printing her face grew grim. The printer was broken and we now had 1 hour to catch a train with no ticket. We went running out the door with very vague directions to a print shop. Somehow stumbling across it we rushed in and immediately begin to attempt to explain what we want to a girl who didn't speak a word of English. This fortunately is something Jake and I have gotten good at and within a few minutes we were off again running to the train station. Walking into the train station with 30 mins to spare, we can't lie, we felt fairly good about ourselves, so much so as to hang out at a bench for a while before beginning the search for our train. With 15 minutes left we showed our tickets to a conductor with high hopes he would show us to our train and for the second time that morning we were met with a grim face. He informed us we were in the wrong train station and sent us into the maze of trying to find the other one. After desperately asking around every block or so for a direction of the station, we arrived to our train with a few minutes to spare. The trans Siberian journey has begun.





-living the dream!