Sochi by Two #5: From Good to Bad Part 1

by Adelaide Ponte Usdin and Wendy Ponte

February 9, 2014

We haven’t mentioned in our previous posts just how hard it has been to get back to our hotel every night. After a certain point, the hotel shuttle (which did not even exist until yesterday) stops. So each night after our skating event is over, we have had to find somewhere to take the train where we can catch a taxi. There are not a lot of cabs, and even fewer that you can trust. The bottom line is that we haven’t gotten to bed before 2:30 A.M. even once so far, and last night was no exception.
 
This has made it impossible for us to adjust to this time zone, and we figure we are somewhere around London right now…

This morning we were required to be up early in order to check out of our hotel by 10:00. We had a hard time waking up, but we were excited to be moving closer to the Park and not having to rely on the train and cabs anymore.
We also haven’t mentioned that originally we were to move to one of the cruise ships parked near the Park for the rest of our stay. These ships were put here once it became apparent, several weeks ago, that many of the hotels would not get done in time. Our friend, and Adelaide’s first-ever coach (Tara) arranged for us to join a block of rooms she had reserved for the Olympic families whose children she represents as a sports agent.
 
At the last minute, however, the Russian government decided to put hundreds of government officials and dignitaries on these ships, displacing hundreds of people who thought they were staying there–us included!
 
We’ve been keeping our fingers crossed for the last couple of days while Tara worked diligently to find places for everyone to stay. And yesterday we received an email letting us know that we were all set to move into the Omega Apartment Hotel, close to the Park, and clean, with nice bathrooms and no sludge coming out of the faucets. Hooray!

So we set out to the village of Sochi today exhausted, but feeling pretty good. We needed to pick up our media badges and, while there, wanted to walk around the Seaport.

This was a lovely spot, with green parks and palm trees lining the streets. There is something very European feeling about this town, and we kept thinking we might be in the Riviera somewhere. We even stopped for lunch at a very Parisian-style outdoor cafe  near the water where we had great soup and shrimp on skewers. We’ve had the Russian creamed mushroom soup in several places, and it is our favorite.
 
In the background we could see cruise ships (there are also many of them parked here) and a beautiful, decked-out for the Olympics, tall ship with big masts.

After this we took the train back to the Zelenaya Roscha to retrieve our luggage. They called us a cab and off we went to our new digs.
 
And this is where the day turned dramatically, and unfortunately not for the better…

Our driver, who did not speak English, clearly did not know exactly where to go because we could tell he was on the phone trying to figure it out. Actually this has happened at every cab ride we’ve taken, so we weren’t too worried. We had given him the address, so we knew we would get there.
 
We got close to the south side of the park and began to stop to ask for directions. At every stop, the driver would show people the address of our hotel and no one could recognize the street name. We tried police officers, Olympic Park volunteers and officials, and even locals hanging about.

After calling Tara we got headed in the right direction, which was on the opposite side of the Park (actually it turns out we were quite close to the hotel, but there was no way to get past the security barriers at that point). We tried calling the hotel, but no one answered the phone.

Let’s just cut to the chase here. It took precisely 2 hours and 40 minutes to find the place–which was probably about 15 miles max from our previous hotel. To say we were upset doesn’t even begin to describe it. Our driver was nice enough to turn the meter off when it hit 700 rubles, but the bottom line is that our hotel is on a street and in a neighborhood that simply did not exist a few months ago and was not even accessible until a couple of weeks ago. People who live and work here do not know their own city anymore.

We arrived at the hotel at 7:00 P.M., just as our event was meant to start. We asked the hotel staff, who were clearly so overwhelmed that answering the phone was at the bottom of the list of priorities, to store our luggage while we dashed to the Ice Palace. We told them we would check in after it was over.