A Great Afternoon on Old Arbat

We decided to really push our luck and try to have lunch out. Nathan is determined that I will be able to throw a 'pink party'and that it won't need to be in our apartment. We dressed Mia in her Pooh Everything is Covered Outfit which she seemed to approve.

As we entered the elevator we discovered that we must've missed the party by minutes as the fresh, dry bottles were all that remained of the good time.

We headed out to Old Arbat Street. I took some more photos to help future visitors find the pedestrian tunnels. Pedestrian tunnels are marked with a little stick figure guy walking down stairs and they are blue.

The pedestrian tunnel itself is well lit and usually pretty populated. Sunday was a bit more sparse than usual although a musician was playing when we came back through.

Sunday on Old Arbat is always festive with street merchants, fresh produce stalls and lots and lots of people.

We chose a new route and walked down the Garden Ring to Arbat. It was a beautiful day and almost hot. After having eaten all our meals in since picking Mia up, we wanted to eat out and chose the Hard Rock cafe which is American and adoption friendly. We sat in their outdoor eating area which is always fun. Somehow you can always get a sense of the people as you watch folks stroll by. You see European tourists, Russians, American tour groups and the likes. All very entertaining and very colorful.

I brought cookies for Mia's dessert (we fed her prior to heading out figuring that Mia on a full stomach would be so much better than a hungry Mia) and fed them in pieces to her. She was all smiles and giggles - now this is a child I could totally get used to! She ate her french fry and approved. She did her jazz hands to the various rock n' roll songs that came on. Too funny. She seemed to have a particular fondess for My Sharona. We added clapping to the beat to her repetoire of music-related responses and she was too cute.

After lunch we strolled down Arbat and found a different souvenir shop that had a good jewelry, doll, costume and faberge egg pendant selection. We spent quite a bit of money purchasing the last of Mia's gotcha day gifts. We also bought two St. Basil's pictures that were crafted by the artist himself. We took a picture and he told the woman that Americans always ask for photographs in Russia. I said, Oh, Americans always want photos? We would normally think that Japanese would take a lot of photos. He looked embarrassed that I had understood him and I was a tad impressed that I hadn't even realized that he was speaking in Russian (the Russian words are easy though ... Americanetz and photographie ... not too difficult to figure out).

We found a vendor that sold Matroyshka dolls and we wanted to purchase a set for Mia's gotcha day collection. The dolls were painted in various Pushkin fairy tales. As the vendor stumbled for the correct English, I told the various stories to Nathan. We had just read two of them this morning in preparation for our new cache series that we plan to put out when we get back in honor of our two children - Sasha and Mia. We purchased one doll that was the tale the Fisherman and the Fish and the other was the story, The Tsar Saltan. It is painted with gold and very beautiful.

We stopped by Starbuck's to grab Nathan and Venti Iced Mocha which proved to be challenging as only one clerk in the whole store spoke English. Apparently they don't have regular mocha but had white mocha which was fine. I popped into the bathroom and thought it was occupied when I opened the door. I threw out my apologies and waited in the hall. A Starbuck's employee came by, said something indistinguishable to me in Russian and opened the door. I peeked in to see this Starbucks actually has stalls. Silly me.

Mia was very well behaved the entire afternoon giving me hope that I will be able to meet people out next week. Nathan and I plan to really test the waters by having dinner out tomorrow night.