Our Vladivostok - Istanbul adventure is underway. We arrived in VVO (the airline industry's abbreviation for Vladivostok) 3:00pm Thursday (April 4th) after our flight from Phoenix via an overnight stop in Beijing.

We had originally intended to break the journey to VVO and have 2 nights and do a little sightseeing in Beijing. China has a new Visa option that allows continuing passengers to lay over for 72 hour in Beijing without a pre-arranged visa (this worked but see below for a caution). However when booking our flights we forgot to take into consideration the international date line and our 2 nights in Beijing turned into 20 hours.

The flight from San Francisco to Beijing was comfortable enough for such a long flight and had a few interesting elements.

The Chinese influence; the vast majority of passengers were (or at least looked) Chinese, announcements were in English and Mandarin and the cabin crew were multi-lingual. And this was a United Airlines flight.

The flight followed (what I assume is) a great circle route north along the BC/Alaska coast, through the Aleutian Islands, across the Bering Sea and down the coast of Siberia. We got some glimpses of the ocean pack ice in the Bering and along the Russian coast, some glimpses of the arctic wilderness of northern Siberia and interestingly a glimpse of the road-of-bones carving its way through white wilderness to/from the town of Magadan.

I am always impressed by the sheer size of Russia. While waiting for takeoff in San Francisco the cabin video screens displayed our route and related information including the distance to destination; in this case 9494km. The thing I found impressive about this number is that it is slightly less than the distance from Vladivostok to Moscow via the trans-siberian railway and that does not even count the extra leg from Moscow to St Petersberg.

The 72 hour Visa worked well at the Beijing end, there is even a kiosk that issues such visas right next to the main passport control. But at the US end the United staff were completely ignorant of this visa and were getting ready to deny us permission to board until one of their number decided/remembered that China would allow us a 24 hour transit visa.

Our Beijing hotel was one of those interesting travel experiences. We picked the place on the basis of its proximity to the airport. In one review we read it was within walking distance; however we thought a taxi would be a better option. We did not count on our driver not speaking any English nor knowing where the hotel was (even when we gave him the address in Chinese from our expedia itinerary). He did have persistence however and after pulling over and asking a number of locals for directions we arrived at a decrepit looking building that would be our sleeping quarters for the night. With no restaurant in sight we grabbed a Coke from the lobby refrigerator and fell into a jet-lagged sleep. Nina was particularly impressed by the bathroom. The toilet shower combination was built into what in the past was almost certainly a closet. A false floor installed to run plumbing, a hot water system against the ceiling, a shower head, toilet bowl and sink and voila, there is a bathroom. Nina was particularly taken by the fact that one (she?) could sit on the toilet and put her feet out into the sleeping part of the room and if she had desired even out into the corridor (though why one would want to do this is beyond me).

Thursday morning we were up and going ready to depart for the airport at 7:00 am (partly driven by the desire for breakfast). In the grey light of an overcast polluted Beijing morning we could see that indeed the hotel was within walking distance of the airport and after 10 minutes we were at Terminal 1 and a further 10 minutes brought us to Terminal 2 from where our Aeroflot was supposed to depart. The terminal is well sign posted in English and tourist information desks with English speaking staff are frequent so we had no trouble finding our flight.

Once under the clouds on the approach into VVO we could see that winter had not entirely departed with large flows of broken ice still evident in the tighter sections of Vladivostok harbor and the Amur River, lakes and small streams still ice covered, and the trees still grey and devoid of leaves.

Russian passport control was a non-event and soon we were in the arrival hall looking for our friend Vladimir. We should have had the sense to exchange photos of ourselves via email so would recognize each other, but that is hindsight. Skype and cell phones fixed that issue and soon Nina was being presented with white chrysanthemums. Greetings were exchanged as we and Vladimir introduced ourselves. A short walk across the parking lot we were in Vladimir's right-hand drive (imported from Japan as a used vehicle) Nissan Patrol 4x4 adventure vehicle heading south from the airport into downtown Vladivostok.

After driving for a few minutes Vladimir dialed a number on his cell phone and then handed me the phone. On the line was an Australian lady named Mary Jane; she and her husband Nick were right at that moment in the process of retrieving their vehicle from the port after having it shipped from Australia. We met up with Nick and Mary Jane later in the evening for a drink and chat. They planned to start driving the next day (Friday 5th).

After a 45 km drive Vladimir dropped us at our hotel (The Azimut - Hotel Vladivostok) in downtown Vladivostok.