A Good Friday on Starry Arbat

This first photo is one of my favorite souvenir shops on Arbat. On the top floor (upstairs), you'll find hand painted Russian toy chests. If you ask the lady upstairs, she'll collapse (with just pantomiming what you want) the chest and put it in something that will travel well. Our first and third chests, we put in the bottom of a large suitcase. Our second chest, we had a suitcase it didn't fit into so we had to check it in the package that the little lady packed it in. Fortunately, it survived just fine.

We headed out around Noon to search for lunch and pick up some items at the grocery store. We walked over to Arbat and looked for some place that was outside that had items that sounded appetizing. When we reached My My, I suggested that we try Plotnikov Pub which Toni had said was good.

It was clean and they had a non-smoking section which puts them into a pretty small minority of restaurants that offer non-smoking. The menu looked pretty good and we ordered a buffalo mozzarella salad, a veal steak and a chicken dish. The waiter became confused over the concept of us sharing a salad and ultimately brought out a mixed salad after we had finished our mozzarella salad. Our waiter looked none too pleased when we told him that we couldn't eat (Mom and I both are sensitive to lettuce .. yes, I know .. what's in lettuce but alas ...). He huffed off and another waiter brought out our main courses. They were good. The final straw for this poor waiter was when he brought back my 500 ruble note and declared can't change. I had intended to leave him a good tip but without change couldn't do it so he ended up with all the change and 10 ruble notes I had as my way of showing that I tried (in Russia you can't put your tip on your credit card so you need to have smaller bills / coins).

For dinner, we met a group of folks at Eastern Quarter for Uzbeki food. We had two couples that had just come from their 8-part medicals which turned out to be a non-event for them luckily. We had Dinia and Ron and Toni

and John, my mother, Mia and me. Kym and John Patterson popped in after a successful day in court. YEA! Their daughter is totally beautiful. We took turns sharing photos and all I can tell you is that everyone's children are just gorgeous. What a fun evening!

Tomorrow we're off to Ismailova!