Getting There

After a year or so of saying our next big trip would be to Iceland, we signed up for the Uniworld “Imperial Waterways of Russia” cruise and that’s when the fun started. A very helpful agent from Avoya travel talked us through some of the things we would have to do, the most important one being to obtain visas rom the Russian government. There isn’t an “app for that,” but there is a helpful web site. By the end of December 2016,  we had our visas in hand, and we thought we were all set to go.

Then, in the middle of winter, we started thinking about the weather we would run into above the 62nd parallel. And we started thinking about maybe planning how to pack for a cold-weather vacation in June. And what was the exchange rate for rubles, anyway? We knew we’d have to plan for tips, so what currency could we use?

Eventually May 30 arrived, and we made it to the airport without any trouble, but not quite in the best of shape. I had injured my right foot a few weeks before, causing my plantar fasciitis to flare up. Even though I had been very careful, even sleeping in a night boot for a week, we thought it would be best for this trip if I wore the walking boot, just to get through the airports. OK. That made sense. A little. That meant that Air France should have a chair ready to wheel me through Charles de Gaulle, and we knew from experience what sort of trek that could involve. Yep. A good idea not to strain the foot again just making the journey.

The first problem showed up when we checked in at the Delta counter in Birmingham. Gee, I would also have a chair there. That was embarrassing. It just was. I could easily have clumped my way through security, or even slipped the boot off for a few steps. I even had my regular shoe in my back pack, so I could have swapped things around a couple of times. But no, that wouldn’t do. I sat in the chair and was wheeled to the security check-in line. That’s when the fun started.

We got to the TSA Pre-check line, and the officer first asked if anyone had any food in their carry-on bags. I was a little tense from the attention, anyway, and I started scrambling through my backpack. I had emptied almost a full jar of unsalted peanuts into a plastic bag, just to have something handy if I got a little peckish. That bag was under Judy’s neck pillow, a big fluffy thing that had been the last addition to my carry-on luggage. I pushed my hand around the pillow, felt around a bit, located the plastic bag, and pulled it out rather forcefully.

Upside down.

Peanuts went everywhere. Right there in front of all sorts of passengers and the TSA officers. There were peanuts down in my back pack, all over my lap and the chair, on the floor, and who knows where else. I was mortified. “Cleanup on Aisle Four!”

Somehow I managed to stuff the bag with the remainder of the nuts past the pillow into the safety of the bottom of the backpack and get through the security scan. We endured the two-hour wait, boarded the plane, and took off, confident that the worst of our travel mishaps was in our past. Turns out that the Delta agent in Birmingham didn’t click the right button, and there was no chair for me in Charles de Gaulle after all. No problem. No peanut fiasco this time. I just clumped along, no doubt mangling other folks’ toes left and right. I never felt a thing.

After all of that, we landed in St. Petersburg without difficulty some 18 hours, two airlines, and three flights later, only to discover that Judy’s luggage was easy to find, but mine was still in Atlanta. Or maybe Paris. We didn’t really know. So we started the process of locating it through the St. Petersburg lost luggage people and sent Tori and K.C. a text message asking them to start a search with Delta and Air France. Tori was at work, but K.C. and her trusty iPad discovered that my bag was at least on its way. The Russian security papers were duly completed, and we were off to the River Victoria to begin our cruise.

You can follow our trip through Russia along with us if you just make a choice from the options on this page. Who know? You might enjoy it.