Day 2/3 - December 15 & 16, 2007

Hello everyone! We are alive and well in chilly Moscow! We arrived on Saturday, December 15 around 5 PM with little to no dramas (which is what you like when you are traveling). We did not do much on Saturday evening as we were totally exhausted by the time we arrived and just watched a sub-standard movie on the Hallmark channel and ordered in some food from the hotel. It was very exciting for us to see a view of the Red Square from our hotel window!

On Sunday (after a good night's sleep), we ventured out for a full day of walking to see the city. We went to a great cafe down the road (for those of you who have seen the movie "Elf", this place should have a sign on their door saying "World's Best Cup of Coffee!"). We then headed to Red Square and went to the Lenin Mausoleum (first time I've seen anyone that old that has been embalmed...sort of creepy), St. Basil's Cathedral (despite what the photo shows, the cathedral is not like the leaning tower of Pisa), GUM (Russia's largest department store with all of the top, most expensive brands...came out empty handed, duh), and other sites in the area. We then headed over to the old KGB headquarters before circling back to the Kremlin where we went through the cathedrals and the State Armoury museum. It was then off to Old Arbat street where they have lots of shops and cafes. We ate at a Russian buffet style restaurant (luckily they had the food listed in English as well) and then stopped for a good, ol' cup of coffee at Starbucks (if you ever doubted the Wayne could not sniff one out in Moscow, shame on you)! Lastly, we went in to the Hard Rock Cafe to buy my mom a souvenir pin to add to her collection.

Back at the hotel, we got a call from our local agent for the adoption. We'll be meeting the driver at 9:30 AM tomorrow and we'll head straight to the orphanage from there. They've said we may only get 1 visit in tomorrow, but we will try to push for 2. We just finished off our night by listing about 6-7 questions that we have for the orphange (as we will likely only have a translator with us tomorrow). We had to narrow it down to the few, most important (so we decided to take off questions like..."Can he color inside the lines" and "Is he good at fetching beverages out of the fridge"). Lets face it, you have to keep your sense of humor during the adoption process or you'll just go mad.

We're off to bed now...counting the minutes until we meet Jakob! Until tomorrow...