Moscow – January 2004                                                                        

Welcome to my Moscow vacation summary! I visited Moscow for a week in January of 2004 and had an opportunity to meet some wonderful people and see some great sights.  First, why Russia? Why in January? Well, good questions.  I live in Chicago so the cold weather was really not that big a deal – I also figured that I would see some things in the winter that I might not see in the summertime.  This trip all began, believe it or not, while planning for a trip to Aruba or some other warm place.  It’s too long a story to get into here, but I had some vacation time coming and wanted to go relax for at least a week. A few hours of visiting travel sites, most notably www.expedia.com, resulted in the idea that I really didn’t have to go some place warm.  I thought about Beijing, Hong Kong, and a few other “exotic” places.  Yet, for some reason I was drawn to Russia.  I had always wanted to visit Russia and never thought it would become a reality.  Well… at the end of the day (or more appropriately put, in the middle of December 2003) I decided upon Moscow for a week.  I could have split my time between St Petersburg and Moscow like many people, but decided there was plenty to see in a city of 12 million.  In hindsight a week really isn’t enough time to really experience Moscow – 10 days would have been a lot better.

So… sit back, relax, and enjoy my visit.  I’ve detailed the steps used to plan my trip and outlined some fantastic resources on the web to help those who might be considering a trip of their own.  You’ll probably find a lot of recommendations for travel agents and the like; however you can plan a trip on your own – I spent a few days researching visa requirements, tour services, and reviews of the sights that I wanted to see and was able to plan the trip as an individual.

Planning Your Visit

First, take some time to use the net to research your destination.  In a city of 12 million, and a country of 144 million, there are plenty of things to see and do.  In my experience, the Google search engine (http://www.google.com) is the best tool to use to focus on things you might like to see.  For example, searching Google for “moscow guide interpreter” returns over 13,000 hits.  One of the top hits for this search was the friendly people at the “Welcome to Moscow” project (http://www.welcome-moscow.com) – but more about them later.  Google returns over 300,000 hits on “moscow russia museum” and about half as many for Moscow restaurants.  Don’t forget your local library or bookstore for a decent guidebook – at the very least the guidebook will give you suggestions for things to see (or to search for on the net).  I used the Moscow Lonely Planet guidebook – it was great.  The Lonely Planet folks have a website (http://www.lonelyplanet.com) with a “Thorn Tree” section (bulletin board) where travelers can detail their experiences - http://thorntree.lonelyplanet.com/categories.cfm?catid=15.  I’d say that you should take a lot of the data found in the Thorn Tree with a grain of salt – I read numerous warnings about scams and all sorts of other problems travelers could encounter in Russia.  While I have no doubt that scams exist, I felt very comfortable in Moscow during my visit – even in some “shady” areas.  Of course your mileage may vary if you are traveling outside of Moscow and are in remote areas.  Another good resource – if just to learn more about the country – is the CIA world factbook – http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/rs.html. 

There are thousands and thousands of sites detailing Russian experiences – I can’t hope to possibly list them all, or even the dozens and dozens that I used to plan my trip, however I can list a few that I think were exceptionally helpful.  The Moscow Times has an online edition with a lot of great links to clubs, Moscow nightlife, restaurants, and all sorts of things to see while in Moscow.  You’ll probably also find the Moscow Times is readily available at most spots in which English speaking folks congregate – it was delivered every morning to my hotel room and was offered at several American restaurants that I frequented during my stay.  Check out http://www.themoscowtimes.com. “Way to Russia dot net” offers some great suggestions on how to get to Russia – visa requirements and such - http://waytorussia.net.  There is so much great information on Way to Russia dot net and other sites regarding visas and travel documents that I won’t go into any detail on visa requirements or how to process those documents – other than to say that it is possible for an individual to go through all of the steps in under two weeks.  A detailed page describing the visa process can be found here: http://waytorussia.net/RussianVisa/Info.html.  There are a number of firms that specialize in providing assistance in obtaining visas – and while I used one (http://www.traveldocs.com), it’s certainly not required.