My mother is a worrier.  Big time.  And I guess when your youngest child has made it a habit of flying halfway around the world every 6 months or so, it’s slightly justified.  So before we left on this trip, we had to hand over the usual list of all our fight details (so she can “watch the planes crash on Flight Tracker” as my father likes to say…)  Except we fudged it a little bit.  Or rather, my husband did.  And she caught on too upon quick glance…but I think I showed her a new picture of my adorable baby niece as a distraction tactic and we moved on…  So here is, first and foremost, my public apology to my Mom: you’re right, it does not take 36 hours to fly from Cairo to Bangkok…even with the time difference.  We had a secret layover…in Mother Russia. [Ed. Note: Sorry. Between Putin being Putin, and you being you, I thought you’d stress a bit too much beforehand. Luckily, we’re safely out. Plus…what a fun surprise!]

This little detour is 100% Delta’s doing.   Way back almost a year ago when we were trying to book these flights, the super nice ticketing agent came back on the line after a long hold and was super worried and apologetic…apparently people getting a basically free trip around the world can be complete jerks if it isn’t all non-stop and the perfect schedule.   But we were flexible…so when she suggested a 12 hour layover in Moscow, we were game! Plenty of time to clear customs, see the Kremlin, and find the original Moscow Mule for an afternoon cocktail stop!  My husband first decided to keep this stop private until we knew if we’d actually be allowed into the country.   Russia and the USA aren’t on the friendliest of terms at the moment, so we didn’t want to up sell anything that might amount to simply taking a long nap in the Aeroflot Lounge…

And then we tried to get the visa…holy hell the Russian visa is no joke.   First of all, it is 15 pages-each!  We had to disclose every job, address, and country visited for the last 10 years.   We went to 6 countries in 2014 alone…this was going to take awhile.  Luckily (for me), the planning breakdown of this entire trip went as follows: Husband is in charge of all visas and vaccines to get us into every country, plus the route of the Australian road trip; Wife is in charge of everything else.   So finally I caught a break!  [Ed. note: It took a long time. Pulled out old passports for trip logs, plus all the other paperwork. China’s visa application was also difficult and long and needed 15 pages, but Russia’s was the most worrisome.]  But then the fees added up…the regular visa fee, the fee to use the (required) 3rd party to submit the paperwork to the Embassy on our behalf, the overnight shipping fees because those passports needed to be back ASAP to get the next visa (it was an orchestrated timeline this summer that caused lots and lots of anxiety), plus the fee to some random tour company online to have a visa invitation letter written in Russian and e-mailed to us…only to find out when it came that they had us staying in Moscow for 2 days and told us to make up a hotel on the application.  Yup, we were officially told to lie on our Russian visa application…and so we did. [Ed. note: whatever it takes to be able to go see the Kremlin! This was another reason just to skip mentioning this to the in-laws…]

Somehow, they let us in.  Our luggage was checked straight through to Thailand so we had the clothes on our back, the very heavy carry-on backpacks, and the information that a nice local woman named Maria would meet us in the arrival hall at 8am…  Oh, did I fail to mention our flight left Cairo at 1:30am and arrived in Moscow at 7am? Yea, we were doing an all day walking tour of Moscow on 4 hours of seated airplane sleep…what could go wrong?

Famous last words.  My pants split.  Straight down the middle.  I don’t know how it happened, but I can assume that sometime during the restless sleep where I was trying to bend my legs up and onto the (empty) armrest in front of me, I overstressed the seams of my very favorite (and only packed) pair of jeans.  And so in we go to Mother Russia. We’re exhausted, we’re starving, we cannot figure out the Russian word for milk so that I can order a proper cup of tea to attempt to revive myself…oh, and it’s 2 degrees out (Celsius, but man does it make the point better than 36…)   Yes, we left the Sahara Desert of Cairo where it was 90 [Fahrenheit this time] and were heading to Cambodia where it should be closer to 98…but we decided to stop for a few hours and venture out into the near freezing world of Moscow for a stroll…with no jacket, a thin sweater each, and a gaping hole in the seat of my pants!  (I bought a cap, Mom, I won’t get sick, stop worrying…)

The tour was actually very cool.  I didn’t know much about Russia that I hadn’t learned from “Anastasia”, so my information needed a bit of updating.   We toured the metro, where Stalin built every single stop to be a different, extravagant work of art.   Truthfully, there are chandeliers, mosaics, carved sculptures, it is stunningly beautiful.  We also had the pleasure of a guide who grew up in Moscow during the Cold War and could pepper each story her personal experiences in “Communist Boy Scouts” and tell us Stalin jokes!

Then we got to the Kremlin.   It is not, as I expected, that beautiful and colorful building that looks like sculpted candies.   That’s a church…named St. Basil’s…after a homeless beggar who died and was buried underneath.  The Kremlin is the massive fortress next door in the Red Square which houses Lenin’s palace, the armory, 4 more churches, a garden, and basically everything except for Putin.   I can understand why every image of Moscow shows St. Basil’s instead…the Kremlin’s wall and Lenin’s mausoleum isn’t nearly as picturesque and Russia is working on an image problem… [Ed. note: Russia’s image is perfect…in Russia.]

We did our guided tour like good boys and girls and then our guide was done…and our flight wasn’t for another 5 hours.   We could go back to the airport and hang out OR she would give us a subway map with directions and we could stay and tour the Kremlin museums…which had 10 Faberge eggs.  I really like shiny things, and über rare, priceless Russian treasures sounded much better than whatever unknown lay before us in the Aeroflot lounge…so we chose option B…and then she left us…alone…in Russia.  We lasted about 20 minutes and one covert photo of those eggs before we hightailed it back to the relative safety of the airport behind customs.  We’re adventurous but we’re not reckless and we felt like we were living on borrowed time with this little stop…especially since we weren’t sure if the customs officers would question our “2 day visa” when we went back through 8 hours later!