We Moved to Sochi

We moved to Sochi on September 13, 2012. We made the decision to take the train from Moscow to Sochi instead of flying. A couple factors went into this decision. Mark had quite a few business trips to and from Sochi before we moved. He discovered that the planes are very small and usually hot. We didn't want the girls to have any issues in the baggage area.

We had moved a lot of our stuff down to Sochi before we actually made the final move with help from some friends and a few business trips. Mark would bring down a bag or two each trip. With the help of our friends, we were actually able to get quite a lot down to Sochi. However, there is just some stuff you can't send weeks in advance so we still had a bit of luggage. We would have had to pay a lot of money in extra baggage, had we flown.

Financially, the plane vs. train options came out to about the same. We had to buy out all four berths in the train because of the dogs. However, since we did this, we had  a lot of room for the rest of our luggage. Even with buying all four berths, we paid about the same as we would have if we paid for two plane tickets, the extra fees for the dogs and all of the extra luggage fees. Plus, we had been wanting to take a train, so this was our chance!

Danielle booked the train tickets through Express to Russia www.expresstorussia.com. They were extremely helpful. Danielle started out by using the chat feature on their website to ask all of her ridiculous questions. Then we communicated via email and phone to do the actual reservation. Everyone she talked to spoke great English and were very happy to help. We would recommend this website to anyone wanting to purchase train tickets in Russia.

 Our Berth

The train ride was 29 1/2 hours. We got on the train at Kurskaya Station. The conductors assigned to our train car were very nice. They spoke less English then we do Russian but we managed to get on and get settled. We made sure to have the schedule of stops we would make in advance (provided by Olga from Express to Russia). The schedule showed where, what time and how long each stop would be. This allowed us to plan out which stops we would get out with the girls to let them do their business.

Our berth was very nice. We were in a second class berth and we were pleasantly surprised at the size and cleanliness of the train. They provided clean sheets and blankets, towels and a little travel kit which included a toothbrush, toothpaste, a comb, wet naps, cotton swabs, a shoe shine tissue and a shoe horn. We were very happy with the quality of the train.

The train left right on time and we were on our way. Our first stop was 2 1/2 hours after we left so we made sure to feed the girls dinner before then and were ready to jump out and explore our first stop. There were also a couple of girls who came around taking orders for dinner. We were surprised that there was this option as we had planned on eating the instant borscht soup mixes that we had packed. We were happy that there was an option for a hot full meal so we took advantage of it and ordered dinner. For train food, this was very good and again, we were pleasantly surprised.

We chugged along making our stops and dashing out with the girls, grabbing a coke or a beer from the local vendors on the platforms. We loved the train!! Our experience from beginning to end was excellent and we can't wait until our next train adventure.