Baby Obsessions

Babies are such funny creatures. They become obsessed with the wierdest things. 

I turned the laundry on about twenty minutes ago and since then Adam has been staring at it and trying to get to the machine (or at least he was until he noticed I had brought out the camera out and then decided he wanted the camera more than the washing machine!)

Adam is also MOVING! He’s up on his knees and not crawling yet but somehow manages to get from point A to Point B.  He has this new crawl that consists of getting up on his tippy toes and propelling himself forward.

He started on the white blanket and has been moving slowly closer to the washing machine!

Quite a difference from the days I used to plop him on the couch and there he would stay there for hours.
 –Fotini

View from my window

Our apartment here in Moscow has great views from the windows.

This is the view from our living room window at night.  It doesnt get this dark here until after midnight…so we have Adam’s jet lag to thank for this picture 🙂

And at night.
This buidling is one of Stalins Seven sisters.  Initated under Stalin these seven buildings came to embody an architectural style dubbed “Stalin Gothic”. This one is called Krasnaya Presnya Tower and once housed Soviet aviation elite.

This is the view from our bedroom. Very relaxing.

The view from the kitchen window at 10 pm.

The view inside the apartment 😉

–Fotini

Best Laid Plans

Day two in Moscow and we had a lot planned…but jet lag was back again and the whole Ali clan slept until noon.  We finally woke up, showered and headed out for some breakfast and sightseeing.

We decided to stop in for a very late breakfast at Shokoladnitsa café.  This means chocolate and chocolate anything is a magnet for Randy. We managed to find some blini on the menu, mine was chocolate and Randys was bilberry. Neither of us have any idea what a bilberry was. According to Wikipedia, bilberry is known in English by a very wide range of local names including blaeberry, whortleberry, (ground) hurts, whinberry, winberry, windberry, wimberry, myrtle blueberry and fraughan.  Not a single one have I ever heard before BUT more importantly it tasted delicious.

Even though we were starting late in the day we decided to explore a bit further today and head out to Kolomenskoye. This was our first time on the Metro. As we are learning Moscow is not built for babies in strollers.  There are stairs everywhere! Luckily there were two of us to carry his stroller up and down all these stairs.

The Metro was super easy but some of us were tired out from all those stairs.

I decided Adam should dress like a Russian gymnast and he was super happy with my fashion choice.

Thanks Grandma Gertch for my whale shirt!

Kolomenskoye is a really pretty park right on the Moscow river and has churches and historic buildings from the 15th to the 20th century.  I wasn’t actually expecting much from the description in the guide book and in all honesty just let Randy pick what he wanted to do since he starts work tomorrow.  But I was surprised at how beautiful it was.  I really enjoyed it.  It reminded me of a park in London.  In fact, I’ve been really surprised at how much Moscow reminds me of Europe. Mostly Paris but London as well.

We even managed to find a food truck with blini (which I’ve come to realize are really just Russian for crepes) and a beer for Randy and we sat in the grass to eat.

Erika- this one’s for you!
Our next stop was to head to Izmailovsky Market. This is when plans started unravelling. When we arrived it was pouring. We walked around a bit but it was too hard with Adam.  I decided to come back on my own later on in the week. We headed back to the Metro and headed to a restaurant for dinner. When we got out of the Metro it was raining even harder. So….we aborted this part too and ended up at Shesh-Besh right next to the Metro.  This is an Azerbaijani chain.  The food was so-sobut we were just glad to be out of the rain!

Despite the rain, day two in Moscow was great as well.  Tomorrow Randy is off to work and Adam and I are on our own to explore!

Priviet Moskva

After a short deliberation, we decided that Adam and I would join Randy on his business trip to Moscow for three weeks. This would be the first time Randy and I had left the US since we returned a year ago and Adam’s first international trip.

We were extremely lucky and we had the whole bulkhead row to ourselves.  Adam had his own seat and slept for six hours.  As Randy said, this is the best we could have ever hoped for…yet when we landed at 3am Washington DC time we suprisingly didn’t feel refreshed.

Poor Niles shown above didn’t make it off the plane, a moment of silence please. 

It took about an hour in Moscow traffic to get to our apartment.  More on our apartment to come.  We decided the best way to get over jet lag is to stay up as late as possible so we had a quick look around and a quick outfit change and headed out to see some sights.

Some of us were luckily able to sleep on the go.
We got on line and waited for tickets for the Kremlin and walked all the way inside….before we realized jet lag had reared it’s ugly head.  We wanted to eat at Bosco Cafe which is in GUM and is located at the Red Square.  We now know the Kremlin and the Red Square are two seperate places (but close to each other).  So we left Kremlin (with plans to return after lunch) and headed to Bosco where we had a great lunch.
After our long and luxurious lunch we realized that the Kremlin and Lenin’s Tomb were now closed, jet lag rears its ugly head again. But we still had time to go to St Basil’s.
After we had our fill of sightseeing, we headed off to dinner. We walked to Pushkin,  a restaurant known for their Russian food.  They even managed to scrounge up a high chair for Adam so he could eat his dinner (several days later I now realize how rare this is…)

Pushkin was delicious. A little fancy, but we got to taste some Russian fare, vodka and pickled cabbage.

All in all we had a great first day in Moscow!

Clams & Tomatoes

After a whole day out and about in Modena we came home ready to cook dinner. We had gone to Pam, our local supermartket, that morning to get clams. The fishmongers were nowhere to be seen at the markets but because we’re in Italy the supermarket had the exact clams that the recipe called for – Vongole Veraci.
I took a quick nap and sent Randy out to find bread and white wine (he volunteered!). Following his return he had to run back out to get a bottle opener, following this return he had to run back out to get some tomatoes since the lamb lettuce we had bought on Monday had already started to wilt. At 31 you think i would know if tomatoes had an e in it or not, but I still need to look it up every time, thanks Dan Quayle.
We finally got all we needed and we started making our linguine with clams. We got it all in the pot and it looked amazing boiling away. I made a salad with just the tomatoes, basil, olive oil and the balsamic we had just bought in Modena. I’ve never had balsamic that tasted that sweet! The pasta was delicious as well and didn’t last very long.
Tomorrow is already our last day in Bologna. Time goes by fast when you’re eating great food!
— Fotini

Modena and its Discontents

In Modena there is this amazing little hole in the wall trattoria. To be honest, it was the top reason we went to Modena. The cathedral would be great to see and all, but when Batali says “If there is one stop on your trip to Italy, wherever in Italy, it must be here…”, then I become a man obsessed. I forced Fo out of bed (again) and forced her to drive me (I don’t drive stick) to Modena early in the morning.


The place was incredible. Hidden on the back streets, away from the prying eyes of dusty tourists, this place had it all. Vintage wine bottles galore and all sorts of Italian specialities.

It had one other quality. Its closed on Tuesday (example 1 of “discontent” (see title)). Hungry wife is mean wife. Which means blood sugar needs to be raised asap before Modena plans are in the gutter. So we prodded along and found a reasonable restaurant with reasonable pasta, which equalled reasonably happy wife (not ecstatic husband).
But we were there for other reasons as well! UNESCO World Heritage Cathedral! On we went until we reached said cathedral:

Yup. That’s scaffolding (discontent example 2). And no entrance inside because apparently even cathedrals are no-goes during siesta time.
Don’t get me wrong. Modena was a beautiful city. Probably even prettier than Bologna. We are really happy we went. I even got to make fun of Fo when she accidentally poured half a bottle of olive oil onto her caprese salad. And we had some other great moments too.


— Randy

Market Day in Bologna (At Long Last)

People who know me know that I am a huge Batali fan. There’s even a picture of me and the big guy in front of Babbo in New York. So a pilgrimmage to Bologna has always been on my shortlist of things to do. I didn’t exactly give Fo full disclosure as to why we were here. I gave her the “its a pretty city with antique markets” rationale for why Bologna should be our first stop, as opposed to the “I’m going to eat everything within my line of site” truth of the matter.

Anyway, market day finally arrived. Some of us were less enthusiastic about our early start to hit up the main open air mercato (guess which one) but I (ahem) gently nudged her and we were on our way.

The market was incredible. The best fruits, vegatables and cuts of dead animals I have ever seen. Is it overkill to call it a gastronomic temple? Maybe. But it is. Plus I’ve lived in London for 5 years so I’m allowed to use superlatives when describing fresh ingredients at reasonable prices.

We picked up all the ingredients for our lunch of tomato bread salad, along with chunks of rustic bread, bresaola and pecorino. Fantastico!

Finished product below. Tasted as good as it looked.

— Randy

Bologna!

After a loooooong night sleep on the train and a seven hour delay our train arrived at Bologna Centrale station at 1pm (our scheduled ETA was 6am).
A short taxi ride and we arrived at the apartment that will be home for the next 5 days. Even just walking into the building with the marble floors and grated elevator door it felt like we were in Italy. The apartment is spacious, clean, sunny and airy. Everything we could hope for. It’s also central and we’ve been able to walk everywhere.

We took one of the best shower of our lives and washed the 24 hour journey off and headed out to explore. We walked to the main part of town – by Plaza Maggiore and everywhere we looked was beautiful, from the buildings to people eating big Sunday lunches.

As we wandered around we even came across an antique market that is held every other Sunday. If only I hadn’t over packed my suitcase I would have bought tons!!
We looked for a market to buy food to cook dinner but since it was Sunday everything was closed. We were forced to eat out! We chose a restaurant called Diana. It was DELICIOUS! Randy kept saying Bologna was the culinary capital of Italy but as usual I doubted him, until this meal that is. To start i had a raddichio salad and Randy had tortellini in broth. While Randy made the better choice here I have to say, that salad was one of the best ones I’ve ever eaten.
Here are the last few tortellinis before they were eaten up! For my main I got Spaghetti Bolognese, after all this is the place it was invented! It was amazing and didn’t even have any tomato sauce in it. How do they do it? I’m going to replicate this dish if I have to suffer and make it every day until I get it right! Randy got a veal dish that was also amazing. To top it off we decided to celebrate our first day in Italy with some gelato, a perfect first day!

Wish you were all here eating with us!

-Fotini

Leaving London

After three weeks of saying goodbyes to all our amazing London friends
and tons of boxes and packing

we are finally on our way!

We have hopefully two months before Randy starts his new job in DC and figured there is no better place to spend it than the Mediterranean in summer! One month in Italy and one month in Greece, first stop Bologna.
Since we have loads of time we decided to start our trip with a train down to Italy. We took the Eurostar to Paris and with only an hour in between our trains we took a quick taxi from Gare du Nord to Paris Bercy train station and waited on a long line to get our tickets. Well Randy waited and I guarded our luggage- a.k.a.- sat down. About 10 minutes before our train was expected to leave we heard an announcement that our train is going to be delayed for three hours due to a fire in a tunnel in Switzerland. So three hours later we were finally really on our way.

Our two person sleeper was sospacious we hardly got in each others way. We were scheduled to have dinner on the restaurant car at 11 pm but we fell asleep at 10:30, knowing that we would wake up and be in Italia!!!

-Fotini