No confirmation

Apparently the train Oksana was on was delayed and she didn't make it back in time to present The Letter at court today (or yesterday, Russian time). Hopefully as I type this she is standing in front of a judge getting it approved and I will hear about it tomorrow morning my time.

In the meantime, my agency is very sure that all systems are go and while I have only booked the flights to and from Moscow and the hotel for the one night we will be in our region, I am researching accomodations for other nights because once we do get final confirmation, I need to book fast in case some of this stuff disappears. Two of the most popular "adoption hotels" in Moscow are already booked for the nights we need and the third is only offering $600/night suites at this point. No thanks.

Moscow has several airports, apparently. The one we flew through before was SVO. This time we will probably be going out of SVO to and from our region, and DME going to and from the US. These aiprots are not near each other, but we will be spending the night between flights, so we can manage this.

I was looking to see if there is a hotel at the DME airport since we might have a very early flight (long story...decision forthcoming tomorrow) home on the 24th. I don't think I will be booking us at that hotel, however. Many of the reviews on Tripadvisor are bad, but this one takes the cake. It is long, but entertaining.

If you've never used Tripadvisor, it is a wonderful site where travellers review hotels and then you can click a button and search for rates using most of the other booking sites at one time, comparing rates. Awesomeness.

Ranks right up there with Seatguru as my top two trip planning sites. Seatguru tells you what the real deal is with every seat on the plane, taking the mystery out of choosing seats...a real salvation on 10 hour fights where the wrong seat can be disasterous.