Since everyone is so concerned about our security/hotel/sochiproblems, I thought I’d share some Sochi facts.
Three of our group went to London in 2012. We started buying tickets exactly a year from last Friday. We logged into at least 4 ticket drops over the year collecting tickets to 12 events, like a 7-year-old in the 80’s collected baseball cards. We’ve read every Trip Advisor thread about Sochi that exists. After months of no hotel availability and terrible AirBNB opportunities, we booked on a Greek cruise ship parked right next to the Olympic Park. Reports are that they’re much nicer than the hotels.
After paying for booking, we had to pay them to give us a letter that gave us permission to apply for a visa. We paid someone to process our visa application, which was specific to Sochi and required a background check. After all the hours spent booking our tickets, we found out that we also have to have a Spectator Pass, an additional level of security, where they run a background check on you. We also had to do a similar application for our cruise ship. There are two checkpoints to gain access to our cruise ship. Every venue will require a Spectator Pass and a ticket. No liquids, AT ALL, are even allowed in the Moscow airport.
Sochi has a population of 400K. Putin ordered 10K troops in early December to surround the area, and that number is now over 40K. We’ve read every article out there about the hotels, the security, and the black widows. So you don’t have to worry about us. I feel safer than I did going to London. Any article that you send to Erin, Lara, and I is now required to have the disclaimer “I’m secretly super-jealous of how awesome Sochi is going to be, so I’m going to try and poop on your party with this article:”
Peace out, everyone, we’re going to the OLYMPICS in Mother Russia!!!
USA, USA, USA!
