Tourists for a Day

Well, we spent most of the day traveling around Moscow.  Our morning started at the notary office.  I love that their government offices don't open until 10.  Absolutely love it.  I also love that Europeans take such long holidays.  Our translator's daughter lives in Germany and she gets 5 weeks off a year.  Here I am with our translator Irena:

Anyhow, I digress.  The notary assistant who helped us had just returned from a vacation in the Crimea, which is by the Black Sea.  It took about an hour to get our documents notarized, but then we were on our way.   To get clothes.When we were here in June, we were lucky if the temperature got into the 70s.  In the evening it was definitely in the 50s.  So, Vernon packed only long sleeved clothing.  It is well into the 80s right now and Vernon was melting.  I knew he was warm when I suggested we ask Irina our translator to stop at a store to get some short sleeved clothes, and he readily agreed.  It takes extreme moments like this to get the guy out shopping.  So, Irina found a mall near the Kremlin.  She didn't know if she could find a 'normal' store with moderately priced clothing, but she did wonderfully!  She found a store called Zara that had guys shirts on sale.  We found Vernon about 4 shirts.  As you may know, European styles are a bit different that American styles.  I kept teasing Vernon that he would get a tight, sleeveless, V-neck shirt with a lot of writing on it.  We managed to find some normal styles, though.  Except the sizing is way different.  He likes loose clothes and he had to go to an XL to find one that looked like a men's size medium in the states.  Here is a picture of the mall we went to:

So, now we were set to do some sightseeing.  We first drove around to see some sights.  We drove by Christ the Saviour Cathedral.  This cathedral was built as a monument to Russia's

 victory over Napoleon, but was ordered razed by Stalin.  That never happened, but for a while it became a big indoor/outdoor pool.  Don't ask me how.  Anyway it survived and was never demolished and here it is today:

We also went to the Kremlin and saw the Cathedral of the Assumption.  It is located in an area called Cathedral Square, so there were many church buildings so it was hard to distinguish the cathedrals.  Of course, we also saw St. Basil's Cathedral, here below:

We also saw some pretty gardens:

And some old cannons:

Then, in the evening, we met up with new friends.  Four of the families were adopting (2 already have their children, the other two of us are still waiting to pick up our children). Another couple at dinner was an American family living in Russia who loves to provide support to adopting families.  We had a great dinner.  

Tomorrow our train doesn't leave for St. Petersburg until 6 in the evening, so we will get a chance to see Andrew tomorrow.  We are looking forward to our visit with him.

I am not sure about internet access in our hotel in St. Pete, so my posts may or may not be more sporadic.  I will try to find a coffee shop to update if all else fails.  

I am going to bed once the slowest washing machine in the world stops washing our clothes, so I can hang them up to dry.  Load number 2 will have to get washed overnight.  

Have a nice day!

Christa