Friday & Saturday

John and I walked to the Kremlin on Friday morning to visit the Armory Museum. We struggled a bit to figure out where to buy tickets and where to find the entrance in the wall of the Kremlin for the museum. There is a large red brick wall that surrounds all the churches, current government buildings, historical buildings and parks that make up the Kremlin that date back to 1156. We found the right line and after going through security, found there was another line inside the wall to get into the museum building. After entering the building, we wound around, stood in another line and then found the English Audio Guides.

We enjoyed the museum. Saw all kinds of things encrusted with jewels...guns, swords, bible covers, goblets, platters, robes, religious icon frames, crowns and even carriages. I had a hard time comprehending why you would have a carriage with diamonds decorating the wheel spokes. The items were so close you could reach out and touch the carriage wheels if you wanted, although I'm sure some alarm would go off. I wondered how many people thought about trying to pry one of the diamonds out. I had no idea there was so much gold and silver, pearls, diamonds, emeralds and other jewels in the museum. Also in the museum are several Faberge eggs and other beautiful items made by the Faberge company. The armory dates from 1511 and has always been used to warehouse the royal gifts and treasures.

We then went ahead and did the architectural tour of the Kremlin. We visited several Russian Orthodox Cathedrals dating from the 1300's through the 1500's. All the churches are in a small area and have unique features. Some are huge cathdedrals with chandeliers and walls of painted frescos and icons while others are very small, dark and are only partially restored. By about the sixth and final church, you start getting church burn-out. They did not allow photographs in any church, unlike Europe.

We took a rest on a bench in The Secret Gardens. They had a lot of impatients planted in color patterns along with a small rose garden. We headed back home, and stopped at the grocery again. With a small apartment refrigerator and the fact that you can only buy as many groceries as you can carry back to the apartment, you run out of groceries fast. I'll remember this when I'm back in the US at the warehouse club store buying jumbo packs of everything that will last me months. We were feeling like Mexican, so we bought stuff to make chicken burritos Russian style. Which was kind of an improv thing as we really didn't have any authentic burrito ingredients other than salsa. But with some canned corn, fried diced potatoes, chicken strips, cheese and the salsa on some kind of Russian flatbread we had Fiesta Friday. I didn't get any sour cream, which would have made them excellent, and the irony is you can always find sour cream in Russia. We did 2 loads of laundry and headed to bed.

On Saturday, David, who we are renting the apartment from, drove us to the Izmaylovo Market. It was much better than I expected. I had visions of the Nashville Flea Market at the Fairgrounds...the junky electronics, the "as seen on tv" products, the off label "designer" purses, etc. On our orphanage days, we drive by the front of the market and it looks like the US flea markets. But we went to the back of the market and in a small contained little area. It was so much better. It was like a European Christmas Market with booths of hand painted items and traditional Russian made souvenirs along with fur hats and lots of old Soviet knick-knacks and military items. We bought some Christmas ornaments, which is what we bring home from every vacation as our trip souvenir. We also got a beautiful hand painted Uzbek blue bowl for under $3 and John bought a big wooden egg painted with St. Basil's Cathedral in winter and a few other items. I thought about bringing home some of the Uzbek plates painted in blues and greens...but decided it would be too hard to get them home while juggling a new baby and all his baby stuff.

We ate dinner at Yalki-Palki, a Russian chain restaurant. John had mushroom soup and chicken cutlets with mashed potatoes and I had Hungarian Goulash. It was ok. The My-My restaurant food was better. We then walked north of our apartment to a church we could see from our window and then over to a very long park with lots of beautiful trees and fountains. We walked the length of the park then turned around and walked until we hit New Arbat street and headed back to the apartment. We decided to live dangerously and bought ice cream from a steet vendor. It wasn't the pre-packaged Nestle bar type but the actual ice cream in a cone. We'll see by tomorrow if that was a mistake. John is missing ice. I'm getting tired of brushing my teeth with bottled water. So far we've been super careful about boiling our water or drinking bottled and avoiding anything rinsed in the water and haven't had any stomach issues. We have no plans for tomorrow yet. So we'll see what we discover.