ee when we got off the plane in Moscow!!!
After picking us up Sasha took us to our hotel. It is about a 10 minute walk to the American Embassy and is fairly close to the place where we will do our medicals tomorrow. It is not what you would expect in America but there is hot water and a bed. No air conditioning but right now the weather is just perfect. We checked into our hotel and then headed off to see the Kremlin and Red Square. It is very interesting. Many touristy things mingled in with architecture from the 1600’s.
Sasha told us all kinds of stories about different buildings and what used to be there and then what was there now. Most of the time the reason the buildings were torn down was due to political differences. One of my favorites was about a church in the 1930’s that had been there a couple of centuries was torn down by Stalin and then he had a lavatory built on top of where it stood. He said it was to make a statement. I think that goes without saying anything. We visited St. Basil’s Cathedral today and it was a holiday of some sort. I have not been able to look anything up yet so I don’t know what it was. There was a choir singing in there on the bottom floor and it was amazing how the sound carried no matter where you were in the church. The first meal we ate was at Mc Donald’s which is right across the street from our hotel. It is amazing that you can travel here and have a Filet O’ Fish and it taste exactly the same! You don’t even have to speak the language you can just point to the pictures of what you want!! We had Sasha order for us but a Japanese couple beside us ordered just like that!
Right now I am so tired I can barely keep my eyes open. We are going to try to stay up a bit more but I am not sure I can do it. Right now it is 6:17 AM in Cape Girardeau which means I have been up for 24 hours straight at this moment because Dan and I woke up at 7:45 AM in New York yesterday and have been up ever since!! I have never been this tired.
You wouldn’t know it but I have had some sleep now so I think I can go on! We wish we had the internet so we could call and talk to the kids. That is always the hardest part of our trips. I am sitting in the hotel in the dark looking at the beautiful lights on the buildings because we are on the 10th floor and we have windows that go from the middle of the wall all the way to the ceiling. This building is very old and has not been renovated. The walls are 2 shades of very 60’s green and the furniture looks about that old as well. We have tv but it really isn’t worth watching. The Russian’s idea of entertainment is very odd.
So right now it is dark outside but we are downtown so there are many tall buildings, like the one above, and there is a beautiful orange moon in the sky just over the tops of the buildings and you can see the reflection of it in the Moscow river. Very picturesque if my camera would take good night shots. This is a shot from our hotel room window. a 
Sasha took us
to an awesome little supermarket yesterday and we bought some meat, cheese, bread, tea and fruit. I also had to have some tomatoes. We ate that for supper last night and now that we know where to go we could probably go there ourselves without getting arrested as long as we follow the rules of street crossing. I needed salt for my tomatoes and we didn’t want to pay over $3 for it so I settled for some that had mainly salt in it but also some garlic and rosemary. It was really good on my tomatoes. I am glad I have a lot left over! Today we have our medical exams around 2:30 PM along with 3 other families most of which are from other countries. Sasha said Germany, France and I think UK. It should be very interesting to get to visit with them. Sasha is also going to take us sightseeing a little bit more today. We are going to see a house that was built by Peter the Great’s father. He also wants to take us to see something called “The Hills”. He said on a good day you can see over half of Moscow from there. Maybe today will be a good day.
We took a nice ride on the subway this morning too. That subway system is like nothing I have ever seen before. Those trains were flying and they came every 30 seconds or so. The subway stations are decorated in different themes. One was dedicated to Russian life. Another one was all about Kiev and was supposed to portray the wonderful relationship between Russia and the Ukraine. Wonderful?…… anyway, this particular one that I have a picture here of we don’t remember what it was dedicated to. All we remember is we rounded the corner and there was this picture of Lenin and Sasha said it was symbolic because it was the end of the tunnel and all turns lead to Lenin. 
This subway station had the longest escalator I have ever seen! When we got on at the top I could not see the bottom and the same when we got on to go back up. I am not sure this picture does it justice but it was steep and long.
I plan to write more tomorrow after our medicals. Moscow is such an interesting place. I am so glad we finally got to do some sight seeing!
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