In Frankfurt now...luggage back in Moscow

After arriving in Moscow from Perm, we were guided to a waiting room where we had to wait for about three hours before getting picked up by a van which took us to a different terminal to catch our flight to Frankfurt. We were not sure why we, along with another five passengers, were waiting in this isolated part of the airport instead of a normal waiting area. A van picked us up and took us for a long ride along the perimeter of the airport and dropped us off at the international terminal where yet another person was waiting for the five us to take us to the gate to Frankfurt. None of this guidance was planned by us or our agency. The other five passengers and us just kept being 'handed' out to another person until we finally ended up at our gate.

The Moscow airport was amazingly impressive. Lots and lots of fancy shops, top notch Italian and French clothing and perfume stores, restaurants, commotion and lots of people everywhere. We had to go through several security lines before being allowed in our gate but made our flight without any issues. That is until we got to Frankfurt and our luggage along with the luggage of the other five passengers we were with in Moscow never made it to Frankfurt. We made our way to the luggage tracking desk, along with the other five passengers, waited until one person took about 15 minutes with each person and filled out the paperwork for our bags. We figured we would probably never see the bags again, especially since we were leaving to the US the following morning and this was a Russian airline.

Getting to the hotel using the subway was a breeze since we had done the trial run on our way there, and since we didn't have all the bags to deal with. We had already planned that we would use the airport storage for the bags so we didn't have to drag them trhought the airport, train and streets, and just picked them up the following morning when we checked in for our flight to Philadelphia. Chris warned the woman at the hotel's front desk that Aeroflot had our hotel information and that they could be calling...if the bags showed up. Two hours later they got delivered!!!!

So it actually all worked out to our benefit. We didn't have to pay for the storage which would have been at least 50 Euros, we didn't need to drag them with us to the hotel and the next morning we had clean clothes to wear for the third part of our trip. The Frankfurt hotel was wonderful, we had a very restful night AND the best breakfast buffet the following morning, all-inclusive. During breakfast I realized that this was the first real breakfast I've had in a week. In Russia Chris ate almost everything on the hotel buffet which had some really interesting items. I wasn't that daring and ate only their bread and the almonds and granola bars I brought with us.