It all started quite innocently one Saturday evening 5 months ago. We had made ourselves comfortable on the sofa in front of the TV. The DVD was titled 'Gulag'; a 1985 cold war thriller about a sportsman turned journalist who was sent to cover the athletics at the Moscow Olympics in 1980. He is framed and forced to admit spying for the US. Half way through the movie, Roisin turned to me and said, "I wouldn’t mind going there."

“Where?” I asked, “the dark, dank interior of a KGB interrogation cell? Or perhaps a barbaric camp in the wilds of Siberia? I don’t think MSC sail there at the moment…although give it a few more years!!!”

Things seemed to snowball after that. We checked our holiday plans for 2014 and agreed we had a free window in January. This just happened to coincide with Roisin’s birthday. Avios points saw to it that we kept the cost down to paying just the taxes on the flights. Before you could say, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’ we were printing off the booking confirmation for 2 return tickets to Moscow with the Worlds Favourite Airline. That will get us as far as the arrivals hall in Domodedovo airport. Now there was a small matter of a visa…

In order to be granted entry in to the country, most foreign nationals require a visa. Unfortunately it is not as straightforward as filing out a form and sending it off. Firstly you need an invitation. Possibly a bit of a catch twenty-two situation developing here but thankfully we didn't need to trawl the internet looking for a willing peasant family who were happy to invite two complete strangers to the ‘motherland’!! Nor did we have to befriend our local ‘Big Issue’ seller as most of these seem to be from the Eastern Bloc and at least 1 must have connections back home. No, it was, on the face of it much simpler than that. Roisin (who else??) contacted our hotel and told them we need to apply for a visa. They sent us a form that we then filled in and returned to them. Within a few hours we received an invitation together with a voucher for the hotel. These documents together with the visa application form, passports and a little matter of an £87.50 fee had to be sent to the Consulate in London. However, as Roisin was going to be in the neighbourhood, we decided that she could hand deliver our visa applications.

On the day of her trip I received a phone call at about 10:30.

“I’ve just come from the Consulate and I have some good news and some bad news”, she started.

“What’s up?” I asked with a hint of dread in my voice.

“Well the good news is that my application has been accepted but the bad news is that yours has been declined!!”

Stunned silence…

"Did you hear what I said? My application has been accepted!"

 Still silence.

A la David Brent she then added, “Oh, you’re still thinking about the bad news, aren’t you??!”

It turned out that whilst I had used the more familiar “Chris” on my invitation and application form, my passport is in the name of “Christopher”. A simple mistake to make. It’s times like these I wish I had a name that can’t be shortened like Bill or Sam!!!

Roisin’s passport arrived `10 days later complete with visa. I re-applied for my invitation, completed a new application and posted my passport with supporting documentation and 14 days behind Roisin, my passport arrived through the post. Would you believe it - although they spelled by name correctly in the centre of the visa, the bottom of the visa shows my name’ Kristofer’!! I’ve a good mind to send the passport back as the names don’t match. See how they like it! However, the last person to wind a Russian up was Nikolas II of the Romanov dynasty in 1917. And we all know what happened then!!

So, Moscow in a few days. We will be travelling on Friday 17th January 2014 and returning on Monday 20th January. We don’t have an itinerary as such but more of a ‘to do’ list. We plan on taking the walking tour. This is a 2.5-hour tour of the most famous sights in the centre. These are normally conducted by students. They are free and the guide depends on tips from the punter. We have booked tickets for the Kremelin state Theatre. We are scheduled to see a performance of Tchaikovsky’s ‘The Nutcracker’ which is quite ironic as this used to be the main pastime of the KGB as well!!!. We would have preferred the world famous Bolshoi but as tickets start from £150 we decided to ‘slum it’ paying £10 each for our second choice theatre! We have also planned on visiting an Ice Hockey game on Sunday; CSKA –v- Admiral Vladivostok. That’s some away trip. Vladivostok is nearly 4000 miles from Moscow, 7 time zones and 1 continent!!! I wonder how many fans they’ll bring with them!!

8 years ago, Roisin and I visited Riga and across one of the bridges that span the canal, there were many padlocks; all shapes and sizes, locked around the railings. We have learned that there is a similar tradition in Moscow. The Luzhny Bridge. Known affectionately as ‘Lover’s bridge’ or the Bridge of Kisses. On the bridge are the locks with the names of the lovers and their bonds of love. What began as a few couples trying to stand out soon turned into a tradition and a mandatory ceremony on a couples’ wedding day. The council were getting a bit pissed off with all these couples but no sooner had they managed to clean up and get rid of the locks, twice as many more appeared. As they realised they were fighting a losing battle, the Local Authority decided to plant specially designed trees on the bridge, made of metal. It is these ‘sculptures’ that are now used to seal the bond. As Roisin and I tick all the boxes and qualify, we decided to partake in this tradition. I purchase one of B & Q’s finest brass padlocks and had it inscribed with the following: ‘Chris & Roisin, Widnes – Moskva, 18.01.2014’. One the reverse is the date of our wedding - 30.08.02. Once the padlock is in place, the couple then throw the key in to the flowing river, thus remaining bonded forever. What makes this extra special is that we will be doing this on Roisin’s birthday. This is not the first time I have been called an old romantic, which until now is what I thought a 1980’s ‘new’ Romanic turns in to!!!

Now we’re all packed. Left behind are my Hawaiian shirts, tuxedo and Roisin’s posh frocks. Instead I have a case full of long johns and balaclavas! The temperature in Moscow is round about the –10°C mark. This is sub tropical for Moscow mid January so maybe I should have packed those shirts after all! I wonder if you can get thermal lined Hawaiian shirts??! Probably not needed as I hear that once the temperature drops below a certain level you stop feeling the cold altogether although losing consciousness probably has something to do with it!!. On reflection that’s probably not a good thing but one thing is for certain…..amera will be working overtime to make this trip as memorable as any of the cruises we’ve been on. Be prepared for OPERATION: PHOTO OVERLOAD!!