Number of tie wraps: 29 (holding steady)
Countdown: 6231 miles down, 2354 to go
Quote of the day: “Where did they go?”
We woke up to a beautiful morning in Nizhny Novgorod, as you can see in the photo I took during a short walk before breakfast. The water in the picture is the confluence of the Volga and Oka rivers, where the city was originally established as a fortress in 1221.
Views of Nizhny Novgorod (Eileen Bjorkman photo)
We left Nizhny about 9:15 in good weather and on good roads, but after about an hour, we encountered a rain that followed us all the way to the city of Vladimir, where we stopped for lunch.
Our rainy entry into Vladimir (Eileen Bjorkman photo)
No, Vladimir isn’t named for Vladimir Lenin or Vladimir Putin. Due to its age, the city’s history is a bit sketchy, but it appears to have been founded in the early 12th century and is named after Vladimir the Great, who converted to Christianity in 988 and is considered the “father” of Russian Orthodoxy.
Vladimir is home to several historic cathedrals, but at 1 p.m., we were more interested in lunch, and we discovered a magnificent restaurant named “Panorama” down an alleyway. The photo of the interior of the restaurant that I snapped really doesn’t do it justice; trust me, this was one of the nicest and tastiest restaurants we have visited on our trip.
Yes, there is a beautiful restaurant at the end of this alley! (Eileen Bjorkman photo)
Inside the Panorama Restaurant in Vladimir (Eileen Bjorkman photo)
By the time we finished lunch around 3 p.m., the rain had stopped and we had high hopes for a smooth ride into Moscow with only about 100 miles remaining. But not long after leaving Vladimir, we ran into construction delays that continued on and off into Moscow. At one point, it took us about two hours to go 10 miles!
We finally crossed into the city a little after 9 p.m., took one of the traffic rings, and then exited on the highway towards our hotel. The hotel was on the left side of the highway, and all we had to do was take an exit, make a quick U-turn, and head back to the hotel.
However, as we headed toward the exit on the right, I turned around and realized I couldn’t see the Roadster through the back window of Leo’s Envoy. Instead, there was a truck behind us, which I assumed was blocking my view. I used the walkie-talkie to call the Roadster and said, “We’re moving to the right, we’re exiting to the right.” I didn’t hear a response, so I said it again as Leo drove onto the exit ramp. There was still no response, and as we moved onto the exit ramp, the truck blocking my view passed and I saw that the Roadster was no longer behind us.
We had no choice but to continue the exit, and then it took us several minutes to turn back around to search for both the Roadster and the hotel. I fumbled unsuccessfully with my cell phone to call Luke and I finally gave up and sent him a text message, “Where are you???”
To my relief, a few seconds later Luke responded, “I don’t know, a space building.”
By then, Natalia had found our hotel, so we stopped and I texted her phone number to Luke. By the time Luke called Natalia, he and John had found the couple in the picture below. They spoke English, and they guided the Roadster to our hotel. Once again, we have been saved by the kindness of strangers in Russia!
Our saviors for the day — note that it’s still light out at 10 pm (Eileen Bjorkman photo)
After a late dinner, I snapped this picture of a Moscow sunset from my room about midnight.
Moscow sunset about midnight (Eileen Bjorkman photo)
This morning, John and Natalia headed to Immigration in Moscow to try to sort out John’s visa while the rest of us relax. Tomorrow, we take a city tour and visit an aviation museum, which I hope will extinguish my aviation low-level light for a while.
