Travel Questions
Monday, January 7, 2008
A few of you have asked me for some travel advice so I thought I’d post some of our experiences here in the hopes that they might help some of you out.
Our adoption agency doesn’t handle any of the travel arrangements or hotel bookings. If you are in this same situation, you might want to research a few travel agencies to make things easier for yourself. While there’s all kinds of great travel agency advice on FRUA, we went with International Adoption Travel agency for booking our trips and they were also able to take care of our Visas. We liked the fact that they’re a Texas-based agency (I know, I’m biased). ;-)
My only complaint was that they used DHL for our Visas which put us through that whole last minute fiasco of getting our passports back in time. However, I will say that they handled the problem well, staying in contact with DHL and us until everything was worked out. DHL is no longer an option for us since our ordeal with them and then the even more recent heartbreaking events of Susan & Randy only confirmed that. I told them this time that they’d only be doing our Visas if they switched to FedEx and they agreed to let us use our account and ship everything that way. Have I mentioned that FedEx rules?
If your agency is not taking care of your Visa for you, I’d suggest filling out the Visa application form ahead of time. You can get the form at the Russian Consulate NY site. Your agency should be able to help you with any of the questions on the form that you aren’t sure how to answer. Also, note the different fees for processing time. We went with the "3-5 day" processing last time and that cut it way too close for comfort. This time we’re going with the "next business day" processing. You’ll also need to send 2 passport photos along with your passports with the Visa application. Each trip you’ll need to repeat this process so you might as well get 2 sets of your 2 passport photos to cover both trips.
We used Peace Travel to rent our apartment in Moscow for both trips. I can’t say enough good about this company. They understand the value of great customer service and strive to provide it. They can also handle your Visa registration once you’re in Russia. They sent a courier to our apartment to pick up and deliver our registration documents. This process was very confusing to us and we had problems getting a straight answer on how to handle this before we left but Peace Travel took care of everything for a minimal fee.
I guess my last travel advice is to figure out how much cash you will need to take over and talk to your bank about getting clean, crisp bills for you. Depending on your bank, it may take 1-2 weeks for them to gather enough new-looking bills for you, so don’t wait until the last minute.
If there’s anything in particular that you have questions about that I didn’t cover here, be sure to let me know and I’ll be happy to to try to answer your questions.
Our adoption agency doesn’t handle any of the travel arrangements or hotel bookings. If you are in this same situation, you might want to research a few travel agencies to make things easier for yourself. While there’s all kinds of great travel agency advice on FRUA, we went with International Adoption Travel agency for booking our trips and they were also able to take care of our Visas. We liked the fact that they’re a Texas-based agency (I know, I’m biased). ;-)My only complaint was that they used DHL for our Visas which put us through that whole last minute fiasco of getting our passports back in time. However, I will say that they handled the problem well, staying in contact with DHL and us until everything was worked out. DHL is no longer an option for us since our ordeal with them and then the even more recent heartbreaking events of Susan & Randy only confirmed that. I told them this time that they’d only be doing our Visas if they switched to FedEx and they agreed to let us use our account and ship everything that way. Have I mentioned that FedEx rules?
If your agency is not taking care of your Visa for you, I’d suggest filling out the Visa application form ahead of time. You can get the form at the Russian Consulate NY site. Your agency should be able to help you with any of the questions on the form that you aren’t sure how to answer. Also, note the different fees for processing time. We went with the "3-5 day" processing last time and that cut it way too close for comfort. This time we’re going with the "next business day" processing. You’ll also need to send 2 passport photos along with your passports with the Visa application. Each trip you’ll need to repeat this process so you might as well get 2 sets of your 2 passport photos to cover both trips.
We used Peace Travel to rent our apartment in Moscow for both trips. I can’t say enough good about this company. They understand the value of great customer service and strive to provide it. They can also handle your Visa registration once you’re in Russia. They sent a courier to our apartment to pick up and deliver our registration documents. This process was very confusing to us and we had problems getting a straight answer on how to handle this before we left but Peace Travel took care of everything for a minimal fee.
I guess my last travel advice is to figure out how much cash you will need to take over and talk to your bank about getting clean, crisp bills for you. Depending on your bank, it may take 1-2 weeks for them to gather enough new-looking bills for you, so don’t wait until the last minute.
If there’s anything in particular that you have questions about that I didn’t cover here, be sure to let me know and I’ll be happy to to try to answer your questions.
Labels: traveling
posted by Dede at 10:13 PM
7 Comments:
Thanks for all the great information! I think I will fill out our Visa forms early and have that out of the way!
Thanks for sharing all the info! We definitely want to use Peace Travel for when we're in Moscow, and we'll go ahead and start working on our visa application.
Did you have to change planes in Europe, or was your flight direct to Moscow from the US? Did they send you paper tickets or did you have e-tickets?
Ana & Russ - we had a direct flight to Moscow from Atlanta and did not have to change planes in Europe and we only had e-tickets. No problems on either side with the e-tickets.
Thanks for all the great info Dede! I bookmarked the travel agency. Did you get refundable tickets for your first trip?
Were you on Delta? We've been thinking about flying from Atlanta too. Thanks for your help! :)
Ana & Russ - yes we were on Delta. I think they have a direct flight from JFK too.
Beth - our tickets are changeable but not refundable. The fully refundable tickets were too expensive and our dates worked out exactly as our agency told us to schedule them. The changeable tickets cost a fee to change but still way less expensive than the fully refundable ones. Make sure you ask all the cost scenarios before you purchase your tickets.
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