Rainy Day

We had a slow start on Sunday trying to figure out how we wanted to spend the day. We finally decided to head out to the Novodevichiy Convent which is supposed to be a beautiful and serene holy site south of the city center. Apparently an early purpose of the convent was to sequester the daughters, sisters and wives of the nobility. On the grounds are several churches in various architectural styles and a cemetery where many of Russia's literary, musical and scientific heroes are buried. We ended up changing plans at the last minute because by the time we left our apartment the rain had started and it seemed like it might go on for a while. We're going to try to figure out another time to head to the convent, when the weather is better.

Our first stop on our outing was the large bookstore that is next to our apartment. It is the size of a Barnes and Noble, maybe even bigger. While there we purchased 2 CD's, one with Russian Fairy Tales and the other with Lullabies. We also purchased a DVD of Pinocchio in Russian.

We then walked for what seemed like a few hours, in the rain. We went from our apartment toward the City Center. We were looking for a restaurant we are interested in trying out called,
White Sun of the Desert. It took a bit of searching, but we finally found it. We didn't eat there because we want to go for dinner and it was mid-afternoon. But now we know where it is and plan on going sometime in the next week.

We decided to head over to one of the spots we found on our first trip, Maki Cafe for a snack. At the Maki Cafe Bill ordered the Siberian Fish Soup and Blinis with Sour Cream and I had the Pot Stickers. All the food was very good, as we had remembered it. It was also nice to rest for a bit as we had been walking for at least 2 hours prior to stopping to eat.

After our snack we headed back to our apartment, in the rain, with a quick stop by the grocery. At the grocery we were able to get our French Press, YAY! We were both very excited about that.

Upon returning to the apartment it was time to do some laundry. We have been here for almost a week and we didn't bring too many clothes (for ourselves at least). It took us longer than it should have to figure out the washing machine. The first load was lights, mainly. When I do laundry at home I am not a stickler about totally separing whites from other lights, etc. This proved to work against me today as all the whites in the first load came out pink. We can not figure out how this happened as there wasn't anything too dark or saturated with color that was in the load. Oh well, I suppose no trip to Russia would be complete without a laundry mishap!

Finally, we ended our day with a movie. We had another Netflix movie so we pulled it out. Without going into too much detail, one of us must have indicated that we like Terri Gilliam movies, because today's movie happened to be another Terri Gilliam flick and although I didn't think it was possible, this one was even more bizzare than the one last night.

Bye for now!