Business Lunch

On one of Adam and my walks we came across this awesome little cafe.  This is exactly the type of place that surprises me about Moscow. It would fit perfectly in the West Village or Marylebone, but here it is in Moscow.

It has every tea you could imagine, awesome coffee, amazing food and a really cute outdoor area.  We decided to go there on our business lunch with Randy knowing he would love it!

Dressed up for our business lunch

To start, a delicious cucumber lemonade. The Russians have amazing cucumber so I guess this drink makes sense here. I wish I knew how to make this. It tastes like you’re drinking a refreshing cucumber! This may sound weird but trust me it’s delicious.

Russian produce that I’ve bought from the supermarket hasn’t been great. This place stated on the menu that they get their tomatoes from Ajerbaizan and they were definitely worth the trip! I LOVE tomatoes and would eat these all day every day if I could find them.

I ordered a Greek Salad, it was really delicious.  One of my pet peeves is when ‘Greek salads’ have lettuce in then. No lettuce here.

Randy ordered a beef salad. We were both hesitant as to how this would turn out but it was delicious as well.

Adam ordered the mushed carrots and thought they were the most delicious of all.

We may have brought the carrots from home 🙂
And then because we’re in Russia we ordered some perogis. Guess what, they were delicious as well.
We will definitely be coming back here for more business lunches!
After lunch, we walked Randy back and decided to take another stab at the Chekhov museum.  We paid the 100 ruble entrance fee and walked around.  It was a house where Chekhov lived in from 1886-1890 that they had reconstructed to look like it had when Chekhov and his family lived there.
It was interesting to see but definitely no Ttetyakov museum. Ok, in all honesty I thought it was pretty boring.  And I wasn’t allowed to bring Adam’s stroller in so I had to carry him throughout.
There was also an older Russian woman in every room who would hand me a plastic covered sheet of information upon entering.  She would then order me to sit and watch me while I read every last word.  That is seven sheets of two sided paper I read about Chekhovs house…while holding a baby…who is obsessed with plastic…and spent every second of my reading trying frantically to grab this plastic covered sheet. 
But the best part of the museum was how every one of these woman fawned over Adam.   One woman even played peek a boo behind a wall with him for a good ten minutes.  It made the trip well worth it.  Also I learned that Tolstoy paid Chekhov a visit st one point and there were pictures of these two literary giants together.  To be a fly on the wall for that converation…
I bought a FOTO ticket but since I was holding Adam it made it impossible to take more than these two not so great pictures. Enjoy 🙂


–Fotini & Adam

Baby Obsessions

I know this may seem odd, but today was the first time Adam saw an iron…i guess I haven’t ironed much the past 7 months.

He was ENTHRALLED. Ah babies, trust them to always go for the most dangerous item in the room.

And just cause it’s cute, here is Adam sitting up. He’s still a little wobbly but he’s getting better.  He would just rather be on his knees moving around.

Adam's Modeling Debut

We had the most amazing wedding photographer, Bartosz Jastal. He was a Polish photojournalist that we found on the internet. We took a total chance and hired him and flew him to Greece to photograph our weddng even though we had never met him.  It turned out to be one of the best decisions we made.

Our wedding pictures were amazing!

 He has this amazing talent and is able to take entirely candid photos where you look great in every photo.

My sister recently got married last month and decided to hire Bart as well.  I am sure this will be the best decision she ever made as well and I cannot wait to see the pictures Bart took of her beautiful wedding! 

Since Bart was in New York to photgraph Daphne’s wedding, we decided to have him take pictures of the three of us. We have only a handful of pictures of the three of us and we decided who better to take pictures of us than Bart.  We spent the day taking pictures in Central Park on a beautiful summer day.

He just sent me an email today to let me know that the pictures are ready and sent a little preview.

Tactical Errors

Error number 1- Not checking how much money I had when I left the house to go to the Chekov museum today.

Error number 2- Not informing my bank that I was leaving the country so that I could take money out at the ATM when I realized I had no money.

Error number 3- Walking all the way back to the Chekov house without counting my change, thinking I must have at least 100 rubles (the cost of admission, totalling $2.50) when in fact I only had 78.50.

Good Decision- Aborting plans to sightsee and using 40 rubles out of my 78.50 to buy a refreshing Pepsi light and heading home.

–Fotini

Tretyakov

After two full days of sightseeing, I asked Randy how he wanted to end his marathon sightseeing weekend. When he replied the Tretyakov Gallery I inwardly sighed.  We had just finished a lovely picnic in the yard behind Tolstoy’s House and I was on a sightseeing high.

Really Dad, an art museum??

While I have nothing against art museums I am usually just as happy not in them.   I have tried to be a person who loves museum and a person who gets art.  I have forced myself to go to every museum in every city I have been to.  I have forced myself to go to the Met in NY, the British Museum and the Tate in London, the Prado in Barcelona and many more.  I don’t list these to show what a horribly cultured person I am. I list these to shamefully admit that I raced through each and every one and would have rather spent most of my time in the gift shop.  My boredom had nothing to do with the actual museums which were all lovely. I just am not and have never been a museum person.

I never thought I would find an art museum, let alone in Russia, that I would enjoy in its entirety.  The Tretyakov Galley has two large floors of paintings and I went into it thinking maybe we would cover a quarter of a floor and I would complain that [fill in the blank- my feet hurt, Adam was hungry,  I was hungry, Adam was tired, I was tired]. Isn’t Randy a lucky man 🙂

We ended up walking just about every inch of both floors and I fully intend to go back.  Each and every room was beautifully arranged and contained the most beautiful, interesting and colorful paintings I have ever seen.

We didn’t realize we had to buy a Foto ticket..so here are the few snapshots we snuck in when the guards weren’t looking.

The Price is Right

Everyone has heard of how expensive Russia is.  So lets play a little price is right.

Which of these cost 600 rubles/20 USD.

Number 1: A very ugly umbrella bought under duress during a thunderstorm.  Keep in mind this is a brand name umbrella, everyone has heard of the Zest brand after all. And Adam LOVES to play with the umbrella cover.

Aunt Daf & Uncle Meej- I love my cool new Parisian sweater!

Number 2: Two bags of groceries at the supermarket.

Dina- I finally got baked beans (at least the picture on the can leads me to believe thats what it is)

Number 3: A bunch of postcards, one of these is probably headed your way soon!

Number 4: Adam’s new toy, which he spotted on the shelf and immediately fell in love with, Niles who?

If you answered all of these you are correct.

For some reason when I bought the umbrella I was really bothered by the fact that it was twenty bucks. And we even did some comparison shopping (yes-during the thunderstorm) AND twenty bucks was the cheapest one we could find! TJ Maxx, where are you when I need you.

Why is it only the umbrella bothers me?  I clearly have a problem if I’m spending 20 bucks on postcards but that didn’t bother me.

–Fotini

Another Day, Another Cupola

Boy does this country love them some cupolas!  And Saturday sighseeing inevitably meant that we would see lots of them.  First, of course, the most famous:
But we saw other stuff too!  For example, the Novodevichy Convent and Cemetery.  Yes, the convent had cupolas.  But it also had one of the most beautiful (and certainly quirkiest) cemeteries I’ve ever seen.  People here are given full artisitic license to design their tombstone as they please (for a hefty price I’m sure). 
One of my favorities was this man who clearly loved his dog (the rose is real):
There was this spooky good posture lady:
This man decided to place a tank on his.  I’m sure he’s not compensating for anything:
The cemetery is backed by a beautiful park where lots of newlyweds came to take pictures.  But my favorite couple were these two.  We saw them off in the distance.  They didn’t say much to another.  They just came to do what they probably always do on beautiful summer Saturday afternoons – they fed the swans.  Like children. 
Ok, and now for some more cupolas.  This one while we were leaving the convent:
And this one from on our way home:
This city has much more than just cupolas.  
— Randy