We checked out of our hotel and waited on our scheduled UBER driver (we scheduled the pickup the day before), and we waited, and we waited, and we waited. Andrea watched him on her phone come up the opposite side of the street and then pull down a side street. She was texting him also trying to explain where we were. On his second pass by, we stood in the street waving our arms. Well, he was so confused that we ended up carrying all of our luggage across six lanes of traffic so he wouldn't have to circle the block again. We were already 18 minutes behind schedule and didn't trust this guy to find his way out of a paper bag. So we get in the car and we are on our way and he asks "Where are you going"?? We were dumbfounded. We scheduled with the UBER app where we were going. Andrea wanted to jump out of the car..but the much calmer Bill said "to the airport" to which he responded "which airport?" Again, dumfounded..UMMM...theres only one. He proceeded to put an English speaking woman on the phone and we communicated that we needed to go to the international terminal, terminal #1 at the Pulkovo International Airport and away we went again. He said he did not speak any English (so he said) and was of Iranian and Turkish decent and also spoke Afghan. This is not a good combination for a couple of Americans so we quickly gained Canadian citizenship. Andrea was tracking him thru the UBER app and on google maps to make sure we were headed in the right direction. After a 45 minute drive going about 90KPH at times we start the last mile of travel to the airport and the driver slows to 60KPH and his gas light is on. Andrea can see this from the back seat and says "OMG Bill we are out of gas". Well, miraculously our driver now speaks English and says "No, we have to slow to 60KPH here because there are cameras monitoring our speed". So now, we start thinking back through our entire conversation where we might have used the words 'jackass', 'incompetent', 'this guy is crazy'...etc. etc. OOPS... Well, our nightmare is almost over and we pull up to the terminal and he looks at Bill and says "Is this it?". Now, Bill rarely comes unglued but when he does its not a good thing. The guy all of a sudden can't speak English anymore and gets "the woman" on the phone that says... "there are two airports, are you at the right one??" Bill exclaims: "It's a fine time to be asking that question!!" Now, we are in a panic along with the driver who is asking everyone if we are at the international terminal, terminal #1. We finally get a big "yes" and grab our stuff out of the car and pocket the tip we had for him. Andrea gave him a one star rating and a bad navigational skills comment. Only bad experience we've had with UBER ever...we should have aborted the trip when he couldn't find us.
After we settled down, we got to endure 4 separate baggage security checks along with 3 passport checks. We're ok with that, the more security the better! It took us two hours to get from our hotel, which was apx15 miles away to our boarding gate. We had time to have a nerve-settling glass of champagne and OJ\cold beer in the business lounge before boarding our flight for Paris. Beautiful Aeroflot lounge, by the way. We were the only two people in the first class cabin on the ride down to Paris and were able to spread out. They served us pickled salmon and caviar for lunch. 🤢
We are currently sitting in the business class lounge at Paris De Gaulle airport waiting to board our 11:25pm flight to Johannesburg. On Sunday we fly to Namibia to start the Africa leg of our tour. Excited for some warm weather and new scenery!! Check out this big bad boy...the biggest commercial ride on the road today...Airbus A380!
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