Day 3, Tuesday, April 24, 2012

This was the first day we had nothing to do.  At night we were staying up till 1 am as it was the best time to Skype the kids at home.  As a result we were sleeping in till 10 am or so everyday.  Luckily we never really had anything going on in the morning.
After milling around the apartment for a bit we ate some breakfast/lunch and headed out.  We wanted to find a place to buy some souvenirs.  We had heard about Old Arbat street as being a pedestrian street filled with souvenir vendors and restaurants.  Armed with a map we set out on foot.  Once out on the streets we realized the main problem with getting around in Moscow for Americans.  The signs are all in Cyrillic.  To make matters worse, the maps are often in phonetic Russian so that we can pronounce them but they are very rarely in Cyrillic too.  We relied on the my iphone and were so thankful that the GPS works despite the fact that we didn't have service.  We'd probably still be fumbling our way around the streets of Moscow...
It was about a 20 minute walk.  As promised we came to a street that was about a mile or so of shops and restaurants.  It was a pretty walk and they were prepared for Americans and spoke more English here.  We bought nesting dolls for the Savannah and Derek, a chess set commemorating either the space race or the cold war...(we aren't sure), a Russian Federation Team soccer jersey and team bag for Willem and some art for me.  We also ventured into a Starbucks to grab a coffee.

we liked the graffiti

old Arbat street

Drew Brees matroshkya doll

We headed home after all the shopping and stopped at a place called Pizza Express.  Again, english sign, english menu, no english speaking people in sight.  We pointed to a pepperoni pizza and ordered red wine.  It was good, just like home and not too expensive.  We walked the half block from there to our apartment and watched a movie we had downloaded and skyped the kids.  It was the first day where we felt like we kind of had a handle on the city.

It's so strange to be there.  Walking around not hearing anyone speaking English, knowing they know you are a foreigner as well.  This place was so foreign to us yet one day it will be so closely knitted to our family.  It made us want to know more about everything Russia!