Bill & Suzie

It has occurred to me that there has been all this talk about our friends Bill and Suzie, but you've yet to see them! Bill & Suzie are good friends of ours from college, are perfect hosts (tirelessly patient, gracious, and energetic!), and extremely well-traveled.

The two of them have lived lives most people will only ever dream of and they are very unassuming about this achievement. They also have the best, most-friendly dog in the world, a portuguese water dog named Higgins who has been a great pal to us.

We have been their fortunate guests for a week now and it seems, to us at least, that the time has been so short. We will miss them very much and I'm not sure how we'll ever repay the kindness they have shown to us here. What special friends!

TUESDAY - Quiet Day

TUESDAY - Today was chillier outside than it has been (about 15F) and we took today as a good recharge day after days of charging around the city seeing amazing stuff and having a good time. It was some much needed down time.

We ate lunch at the compound cafeteria, visited their gift shop, looked at an exhibit in the American Embassy on the anniversary of 200 years of diplomacy with Russia, and had a nice afternoon with Higgins. It was a good day for reading, writing, and coffee. Tomorrow is our last full day in Moscow.

MONDAY - Tea at the GUM

MONDAY - The GUM (pronounced "goom" and an acronym for State Universal Store) is located to one side of Red Square, just opposite the Kremlin. It's a shopping mall for the very wealthy in Russia. There are many American brands you'd recognize there like Gucci, Tiffany, and others.

We came into the GUM to warm up a bit after taking some good daytime pictures of Red Square. It seems like Red Square, one of the highest points in the city, is always especially cold when we've been there and usually pretty windy.

Any benches are conspicuously absent from the GUM to cut down on people loitering inside. We decided to look around and finally to get some hot tea at a restaurant there to warm up. This was our first time alone in Moscow and armed with little Russian.

I knew the word for tea: 'chai' and also I fumbled my way through ordering some 'shokoladnaya' (chocolates) from the waitress there. She was very patient and finally understood, any chocolates she brought would be good.

Russians seem to enjoy their tea very weak compared to Americans and remove the tea bag very quickly. Ours was served with lemon and sugar. The chocolates were delicious and included one that seemed to be filled with chambord and a cherry, another with hazelnut cream, and the third with a sort of peanut toffee.

We felt very proud of pulling this off along with some shopping in the other mall nearby. I was especially proud of the way Jeri seemed to navigate the metro with ease. The day was a real confidence-builder for us.

After tea, we browsed the GUM stores for a bit more and then as twilight descended, went out for one last time, to catch some perfect twilight pictures of Red Square and the beautifully lit red stars that top the steeples of the the Kremlin walls.

MONDAY - The Kremlin

MONDAY - We have been very excited to tour the Kremlin and today was the day! Our guide, Igor, came at 10am and took us for our personal tour. He started with a nice overview of the metro (Jeri's been working on understanding the metro and the stops so that we can get around the city on our own) and got us to the Kremlin quickly. (It's worth noting, no picture here really expresses how huge the Kremlin is, but this might).


The Kremlin borders one side of Red Square and as you might imagine, is heavily guarded outside and inside. For a 30-something who remembers the cold war as a kid, approaching and being inside the Kremlin walls is something that I could not have imagined as a child, and for my part, remained a bit intimidating to approach.



"Kremlin" means "fortress" and indeed it is. Sixty foot walls, 20 feet thick surround the entire compound. It sits high above the Moscow river and overlooks the entire city. It's also one of the oldest structures there, enduring many attacks and invasions through the centuries. It's sort of a large triangle shaped fortification with a beautiful clock tower with bells on one end.



The Kremlin is where Vladimir Putin works and his administration. Once inside, there was one modern looking administration building (not pictured) and many beautiful older administration buildings, all in a warm gold color that was beautiful against the gently falling snow.



There were also several orthodox churches most designed by Italian architects brought in by the czars. Some churches were for men only, some for women only. One was used for coronations, another for baptisms of czars, and another for their burial.

In the one for burial, many past czars lie in sarcophagi around the worship chamber. In this particular church, there were three men from a choir who sang while we were there.

The acoustics of the room were striking as the men's voices would ring in the chamber like bells long after they finished a note. They would often use this ringing sound to sing harmony against before the 'ring' of it died out entirely. Their singing would add new tones to start ringing against it. It was beautiful, hypnotic, and seemed over too quickly.



Just outside this particular church was an enormous bell cast by one of the czars (sorry, can't remember which just now), but damn... the thing's huge. Look at Jeri next to it. It weighs 200 tons and was cast on site.



We also visited the original patriarch's residence (what the catholic world would think of as a pope) and saw vestments of patriarchs dating back several centuries. Many were amazingly ornate, covered in pearls and woven or embroidered with gold thread.

We then toured the Armory, which sounds like a drab museum filled with guns and weapons. To our delight, it was filled with the treasures of state including a huge collection of the czars carriages, multiple heavy gospels (books) clad in gold and crusted with huge diamonds or emeralds as big as 50 cent pieces, coronation gowns of the czarinas in imaculate condition, the clothes of Peter the Great, diamond crusted swords, ornate guns, huge collections of massive gold and silver amusements or ornaments given to Russia from many countries, fraberge eggs gifted to the czarina, diamond encrusted thrones, and the crown jewels of Russia themselves...


Perhaps the most amazing item was a gift to the czarina of Alexander the Second: a silver dandelion, with delicate, tiny silver rods for the stem of each seed pod shaft, not much thicker than a hair. This shaft was tipped with the actual tuft of a dandelion seed around the end, and in the middle of the tuft was a single, tiny, cut diamond. All was exactly to the scale of a real dandelion in full, white bloom. As you slowly walked past or even turned your head, the sparkle of the tiny diamonds gave the impression of drops of dew glinting in the sunlight. It was something I couldn't have imagined was possible to create. Like the rest, it was incredible.

The enormity of treasure in this building was staggering.


Afterwards, we visited the eternal flame, dedicated to those who fought in the Great Patriotic War (World War II to us). Our tour guide had finished his day with us at this point and we were for the first time, free to roam unattended in Moscow. It was very fun and exciting to be managing in this enormous foreign city on our own.



We found our way through ordering a late lunch at a nearby shopping mall food court and did some shopping (yup, with non-english speakers), then took some good daytime pictures in Red Square and stopped into the GUM (pronounced 'goom') to see how the very wealthy in Moscow shopped. But that's another story.

SUNDAY - Public Toilets

SUNDAY - Admit it. You're dying to know about the public restrooms in Moscow. You've heard the horror stories about toilets in Europe and especially eastern Europe.

So Moscow? There are occassionally the port-o-potties Americans are familiar with on the street with an attendant taking admission, but how are most Moscow public toilet facilities? Disappointingly, boringly American.


In fact, (though I'm no connoisseur) I've seen some of the nicest public facilities here, including one with this ornate sink at one of the restaurants.











But, not one to disappoint, I did find a public restroom in a park near Novodevichy and for the pleasure of my readers was sure to snap some pictures. A curved stairwell led underground to a dark alcove (which was honestly a little scary) and a heavy iron door which opened into the mensroom.
















It smelled like a mensroom and the urinals were pretty unremarkable, but there behind the stall doors... the dreaded 'hole in the ground' Americans speak of with hushed tones.

I must admit, if I'd have had to execute number two on this morning, it would have elicited a gasp to see this upon opening the stall door, but this is the only one of these I've seen on the trip. And I've certainly smelled worse in the US.

SUNDAY - The Metro

SUNDAY - The Metros are the Moscow subways and are the fastest way to get around the city. The metro system is amazingly efficient and fast, with a new train arriving at each station every 45 seconds. The metros handle 9 million Moscow residents every day.

Though sometimes 200 feet below the surface (under the Moscow river and several underground rivers too), the stations of the metro are relatively clean and very beautiful. Retired citizens are issued permanent passes for free metro rides.

Built by the early communist party as a sort of palace of the working class, each station has its own architectural and artistic motif, usually celebrating the state, or a particular region of the former Soviet Union, and the Russian people.

SUNDAY - Kish Mish

SUNDAY - The Uzbek place we ate at the first night we were here was 'Koosh Moosh', this place was Azerbaijani and was called 'Kish Mish'.

We started with a wonderful bread I swear was right out of the oven. Very soft bread inside and crusty, crunchy crust, so wonderful!








After that Jeri's entree of Dolma arrived. (An interesting note, entrees don't arrive all at once for everyone at the table as we're used to in the States; Suzie told us that throughout Europe, it's normal for entrees to arrive when they're ready and for each person to start eating when theirs arrrives rather than waiting for everyone to get their entrees)

These were very like dolmates served in Greek restaurants in the States, but I have never really cared for them there. These were much smaller, patty-like in form, and not as vinegary or tough as I've had before. The tzatziki sauce was thinner than I've usually had and seemed just right to be grabbed by the creases in the grape leaves of these small dolma.


The 'risk' entree of the evening was a dish listed as 'Fried Suluguni.' Though Jeri and I were with Suzie on this trip, none of us had any idea what it was.

It was a little slice of heaven. Several slices in fact. Suluguni turned out to be fried wedges of a white Georgian cheese served with a sour cream dill sauce! Spongy-firm, salty, and a bit sour, I'd describe it as a juicy mozzarella, but spongy, not stringy. I think the best description I could give is this; if green olives were cheese, that's what they'd be like. It was outstanding.



I had a pork kebab served on a thin torilla with a yogurt sauce and sliced onion and tomato sprinkled with fresh chopped dill. Wonderfully prepared and delicious.

We finished with a beautiful tray of assorted sweets. Per usually, these were not actually very sweet at all. These were all sort of crosses between yeast and quick breads, usually infused with finely minced nuts, or apricot preserves, or spices like poppy seeds, or a mix of both.

The very best was the diamond shaped item, a piece of baklava that was so dense, different, and amazingly delicious than any I've had in a Greek restaurant in the States, what a wonderful treat!