We’ve arrived safely!   There were a few minor mishaps along the way but in the end we’re here — and all of our bags & boxes made it!

Our day started yesterday morning at 5:30 a.m. as we left the house and the problems began as soon as we checked in at the Continental ticket counter.   First there were issues about us not having paper tickets then she saw that we were connecting with Delta and said that our flights had not been merged and everything would have to treated as separate reservations.   We were clueless as to what that meant. She said that we would have to talk to a Delta representative once we got to Houston about the rest of our flight.   Our main concern at this point was our bags and the odd thing was that she told us they would be checked all the way through Moscow even though she didn’t have any record of us being booked on Delta.   Needless to say we didn’t have a warm, fuzzy feeling about our bags making it all the way.

Rob immediately left a message for our travel agent so she could check on things while we were still en route to Houston.   She called us while we were still on the tarmac after landing in Houston and said she had spoken to Delta and confirmed that everything with our reservation was fine.   When we checked in at the Delta gate they issued us our boarding passes to Atlanta and to Moscow.   We quickly discovered that our seating assignments were not what we had booked.   After talking with Delta, we found out that because they checked us in as Continental passengers on the first leg instead of a Delta partner passengers it released our reservations the rest of the way and we lost our seats.   Fortunately there were still seats available on both flights but we were stuck with some pretty crummy seats. Once we arrived in Atlanta, we were told that the Moscow flight was completely full.   Imagine our surprise when another couple showed up with the same seat numbers on their tickets — fortunately our backsides were already in the seats!   A flight attendant ushered the couple off to resolve the issue and we never did find out what happened to them...

Rob had his usual identity issues going through Customs again. He’s just got to get a new picture on his passport!   While waiting in baggage claim, I was approached by someone who recognized us from the blog (Hi Rebecca) — it was great fun meeting them.   Our translator Tatiana and our driver Alexis (I think that’s his name) were waiting for us outside baggage claim and took us to exchange money, get a few groceries and get us checked into our Cathedral apartment that we arranged through Peace Travel.   So here we are, a few hours later after a much-needed short nap & hot shower.

We’ll be heading out at 10:00 in the morning to visit Liam.   We can’t wait to see if our little guy still remembers us!
 

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