After getting up at an hour that I did not know existed, we arrived at Heathrow in plenty of time to get the 6:30am flight from Heathrow to Moscow. There we met a representative from Noble Caledonia (our tour operator) and our tour manager, Gillian Spoor, who was to prove extremely helpful, patient and knowledgeable over the next three weeks. Furthermore, she could speak Russian. She warned us immediately that things in Russia were very bad economically, because all the banks had recently collapsed. She made sure that we all had US dollars in small denominations, because without them we might not be able to buy anything. She was right!

The flight itself, aboard a British Airways Boeing 757 was good, although the best thing that can be said about the in-flight film, Godzilla, was that it passed the time...

Arriving in Moscow was hell. There were only two people at passport control, and each took two or three minutes to process a passenger. The hall was dark and gloomy with no seats, and so we stood there impatiently. After an hour, someone complained, so they closed one of the passport booths to punish us. After two and a half hours we finally got through. We were then led on to the coach and driven to the North River Station.

We got to the ship, Novikov Priboy (although in Cyrillic the first word looks a bit like "Hobnkob" and so it was promptly dubbed "The Hobnob"), and were greeted by people in costume playing balalaikas and a girl with the traditional offering of welcome of a large, round, decorated glazed loaf of bread with a pile of salt in the middle. We all tore off a hunk as we got on board. A lovely gesture!

The ship was as good as last time, and although designed for some 200 passengers, we were only 55, so we had plenty of space! Most of the American contingent had apparently decided not to travel as Russia as it was deemed to be unsafe. Our fellow travellers were very pleasant - as we had expected, mostly elderly. The crew and those organising the trip were all very good and made the whole thing work very smoothly - quite an achievement in Russia.