Have you seen moose and squirel?

0390  This is on of Stalin's skyscrapers, the last one finished.  The former Ukrania Hotel, now the Radison Royal.

May 15 – On the Train and Arriving in Moscow, Russia.  By the time I decided to get up we had crossed the Russian border and lost another hour.  We're nine hours ahead of Dallas and 11 hours ahead of Irvine.  I decided I wasn't going to sleep anymore so I got up and folded my bed up to get the three across seats back up.  There's plenty of space below Diana's bunk for me to sit upright and look out the window.  Lots of woods, small towns and marshland on this route.  Our train arrived at the Moscow Beloruskaya Station and this was where we had our first little glitch of the trip.  Having been lulled into a false sense of security by interactions with the bellman at the Marriot hotel and Michael on the train when I saw a porter who appeared to work for the railroad I asked him for some help getting our luggage to a taxi.  Mistake!  He loaded up the luggage and then proceeded to walk right through the station to a parking lot across the street.  I was too preoccupied looking around to notice that things didn't seem quite right.  Sure enough, he didn't work for the railroad or the train station and now that our luggage was outside the station he asked for 2,000 rubles for carrying the bags.  Well, I knew that $60 for this was outrageous so we argued back and forth for a while and I finally paid him 1,000 rubles, still way too much.  The 'taxi' he took us to was not in fact a registered taxi and while I was distracted arguing with the porter the man had loaded our bags into the back of his van.  He then said he wanted 100 Euros to take us to the hotel.  Again, way too much.  We went back and forth and he finally settled for 60 Euros.  I found out later at the hotel that the taxi from the station from the 'official' cab would have been about 2,500 Rubles or just about exactly what I paid the unregistered taxi.  I guess I'm going to have to keep reminding myself that I've got to be more alert in Moscow.  It's a bit disconcerting because I usually am.  The only real mistake was the porter.  I won't make that one again.

The hotel Radisson Royal is a very nice place.  It's right on the Moscow River and is in a Stalin Era structure known as a 'Stalin Skyscraper'.  Eight were planned and seven were built.  Locals call them the Seven Sisters. This building was the last one finished and previously was the Ukrania Hotel.  It had fallen into disrepair and Radisson bought it and rehabbed everything except the equipment, A/C and such.  All that was completely replaced.  The building is gorgeous inside and out.  The elevators have inlaid marble walls with ornate designs worked into them.  It's one of the nicest hotels we've ever stayed in.

We were greeted by the Viking River Cruise personnel; they have a table in the lobby.  They checked us into the hotel (and got us a room although we were 3 hours ahead of check-in time), gave us an itinerary for our pre-cruise stay and told us where to find some of the important things in the hotel.  After that we went up to the room, organized our luggage and promptly took a nap.

Later we went down to have dinner in the Lobby Bar.  None of the other restaurants open until after 6:30PM and we awoke at 5PM and were hungry.  The food was good and that was it for the day.