Q: Trip high point?
A: Stumbling into Projekt OGI after wandering around the city for nearly two hours in search of the place. The underground bar was filled with young, grungy, chain-smoking Muscovites, and soon enough I was chatting with a trio of young Russians over Baltikas, a local beer.

Q: Lessons learned?
A: Carry a spare map or battery. On my first night, the battery died while I was exploring Alexander Gardens, and I was just able to retrace my path back to the hotel. There, the concierge handed me a simple map, which I turned to toward the end of every day when the BlackBerry's battery was running low. Carrying a notepad wouldn't have been a bad idea either, since I repeatedly had to scribble addresses on my hand and then type them into Google Maps. And had I anticipated that Wikipedia would be my first stop for basic information (What the hell is pelmeni?), I would have invested $15 in a WikiPock memory card that would have let me pull up Wikipedia entries in a fraction of the time it took to load them.

Q: Overall experience?
A: A lot of Moscow isn't online, and what is often is not in English, so I worried that I was missing the city's real gems. But the Bold put the Web at my fingertips, mitigating my ignorance of the city and its history, culture, and language.

The Case for the BlackBerry Bold
Why the BlackBerry is a smart choice for travelers focused on the bottom line

Corporate road warriors love the BlackBerry Bold for its business-friendly e-mail functions, responsive QWERTY keyboard, built-in Wi-Fi, and slick operating system. But its pinpoint-accurate GPS alone makes it a great tool for leisure travelers, too. Like the iPhone, the Bold uses the AT&T network, and if you sign up for an international plan, you'll receive discounted rates in some 90 countries (see The Case for the iPhone). Unfortunately, Russia isn't one of them, nor is it widely wired for Wi-Fi, so during my three days in Moscow I racked up $260 in roaming charges, mostly from using GPS and Google Maps (both data hogs). Still, the BlackBerry has two clear cost advantages over the iPhone: For one, its e-mail system downloads only the attachments that you select, so you won't automatically blow a fortune when photo-laden e-mails or documents land in your in-box. Second, BlackBerry's browser automatically loads mobile pages, saving you a bundle on data charges, but it also easily loads full HTML Web pages. As for apps, the iPhone still has thousands more, though BlackBerry is catching up: The App World online application store launched in April, making the growing number of BlackBerry-compatible applications available in one spot.