Today is our travel day.  Mark and Jim drove down from Boone last night and spent the night.  These are the guys we will meet up with in Russia.  Coincidentally, they are leaving today too.  They are flying to Helsinki for a few days and we will see them on Monday in Moscow.  Since they had an earlier flight, I was able to take them to the airport this morning.

Our sweet friend, Brandi, will drive us to the airport at 3:00 today.  As usual, David and I will have an early, light dinner (we don't really like airplane food) and then maybe we can sleep for a few hours during the flight.  We have a direct flight from Charlotte to Munich and then a two hour layover there.  It is a pretty short flight from Munich to Vienna and we will arrive there around 12:30 p.m.  Vienna's time is six hours ahead of Charlotte.  The hotel has arranged a car to pick us up at the airport and drive us to the hotel.  

As you can imagine we have to take a lot of cold weather gear.  We don't want to take more than one suitcase each so we will travel in our boots and down parkas!  I admit I packed a pair of flats in my daypack because I cannot spend nine hours in an airplane in boots!  

We don't have any plans for tomorrow afternoon when we arrive so you will just have to read the blog to find out what we decide to do.  I'm pretty sure it will involve a nap!