Still in Moscow

Alive and well.

Via Train to Moscow

We arrived safely in Moscow via the "Red Arrow" overnight train. It was the nicest overnight train Reid and I have been on in a long while and some of us had a decent night sleep on the train. The train was beautiful and the conducters/ hostesses were all dressed in matching uniforms and sent us off in fashion and on time.

After arriving in Moscow, we negotiated the metro during morning rush hour to a stop near our apartment where we found a cafe and enjoyed a leisurely breakfast while we waited for our apartment. At 11:00, we dropped our bags off at our apartment and headed back out for a stroll around Patriach's Ponds and Old Arbat. We came back to the apartment for a quick nap and then met up with one of Tim's family friends for dinner. On the way to dinner we walked through the Red Square, posed in front of St. Basil's Cathedral, and gave the former KGB headquaters building a wide berth. We enjoyed a leisurely dinner and stroll back home.

More St Petersburg

Over the past couple days in St Petersburg, we visited the Peter & Paul Fortress, and took a stroll across the Neva River, were awed by beautiful mosaics inside and out of the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood, and took in the Hermitage which in addition to being a beautiful palace contains an impressive art collection including a couple Da Vinci's, Rembrants, Rubens, Monet, Matisse, Renior, and Pisarro just to name a few. We are packed and about to head off to the train station for our overnight train to Moscow where we'll be for the next few days.

St Petersburg

While in St. Petersburg, we have strolled around Nevsky Prospekt, visited Gostiny Dvor, admired the exterior of Eliseevsky (a delicatessan mentioned in Anna Karenina), viewed Russian art at the Russian Museum, strolled through the Admiralty and Mikhailovsky Gardens, drank vodka chased with picked Herring, stayed up until 4:30 drinking with Russians, been dazzled by a fireworks display, and taken a day trip to Peterhof. Peterhof is a tsarist palace whose grounds include 150 fountains that has been likened to Versailles. We spent a beautiful day strolling through the gardens and viewing the fountains along with many other locals and tourists. Today we plan to visit a couple more sites and tomorrow we'll spend the majority of the day at the Hermitage before embarking on an overnight train bound for Moscow. We chose to take the "Red Arrow," in which girls in uniform will allegedly greet us with song and dance and send us off with song and dance. It has been an adventure and we are really lucky to be traveling with out own translator.

Happy belated father's day, Dads. Love you! Dyanne & Reid.

Arrival: Russia

Blogging is back to document Russian 2011. Check back for more updates soon. We successfully met up with Tim, Stephanie, and Jen in Newark and arrived in St. Petersburg on time. Our driver was there to meet us and drove us straight to our apartment where our apartment agent greeted us to show us our HUGE apartment! It's three bedrooms, two baths, with a complete kitchen and walking distance to a lot of the big sites. We'll post more updates soon.

XOXO Reid & Dyanne