Sitting in the hotel room, waiting for 11pm to do our daily Skype session with Ryan, and we decided to do an update for our dining and shopping experiences. (OK, truth is I typed this in last night, but didn't post it because I didn't finish it... now posting it!) So far we have not had a bad food experience yet. Even just our Sbarro pizza slice and beer tonight. :) Yes, we cheaped out, but that was because of our late lunch at Taras Bulba mentioned in our earlier post.
Lets start from the beginning to keep it in chronological order. Our first night here we were so tired we didn't want to go anywhere out, especially since we hadn't exchanged any money yet and didn't want to worry about cash issues. Good thing, because tips are often not charged here so you need some cash on the side for them. Instead, we stayed in the Marriott and went to the Flat Iron grill. We sat near the Fenway Park sign. No kidding. At least one of us kept authentic with the traditional pelmeni, which are dumplings filled with meat. They were in a chicken broth with a dollop of sour cream on top... yum. The other of us had a pork filet... boring. ;) OK, Jacki did say it was good, but the pelmeni were far better I'm sure!
On our free day we started at Cafe Mania. Waffle for Jacki, Blini with apples for myself (peek ahead two days to see what Jacki has for breakfast). Green tea that Jacki described as a combination of dirt and grass. I thought it was ok... if you added enough sugar the dirt taste went away leaving just the grass flavoring. :) We caught a quick late lunch at Sbarro which included a couple pizza slices and some buffet style extras. We were just going to hit McDonalds, which turns out to be extremely popular with the Russians, but there were literally over a hundred people waiting in the lines there so opted for the healthier pizza. On the way back to the hotel we stopped at a mini supermarket to get some water, beer, yogurt, and some candies. In the evening we went to a place right around the corner from the Marriott called Cafe Esenin. Food was really great and the service "interesting". We had a young waiter who was quite quirky. He couldn't understand my Russified Ukrainian and when trying to explain things to him just got confused. He also delivered my food about 15 minutes before Jacki's and then proceeded to deliver the check while only half way through that meal.
The first orphanage visit day was hectic. Breakfast was yogurt and granola bars in the room, and lunch passed us by. We did all have a little smorgasborg in the car though. In addition to our usual four, we also had Leyla the adoption agency rep in there. We snacked on Twizzlers, Trader Joe's sweet and spicy pecans, and the Russian candies we picked up at the grocery store. Vitali loves the pecans and insisted they were walnuts (via the dictionary). Russians don't seem to know what a pecan is so on our next trip we will bring an assortment for comparison sake.
After being dropped off we headed out for some souvenier shopping and Jacki was so hungry we looked for a place to get a bite. After much confusion and searching for a locale a guidebook recommended, we settled in to a place that translated into English was just "Beer Hall". Cafeteria style buffet with a selection of beers. Jacki decided the food was a bit outside her safe zone and stuck with chicken noodle soup, minus the chicken we found out afterwards. I had the beef stroganof, which for some reason was made with chicken instead of beef. Somehow it fled the chicken pot and got into the beef stroganof pot. It turned out to be rather tasty, but Jacki still didn't believe that it could be and refused a taste. :)
It was at this point we hit the Old Arbat street, which is basically a walking mall area, but filled with tourist shops. Jacki was into shopping mode and I decided to just hover and be invisible. Turns out that when each store has 4 or 5 girls working in them, there is no being invisible. At one spot Jacki had one girl assisting in the selection process while I had two girls conversing in various forms of English, Ukrainian, and Russian. They were smart enough to at least go ask Jacki if it was ok for them to start serving me alcohol while I waited.
Later that evening we went looking for a dinner venue. The funny part about this is that earlier Jacki had asked the front desk about a place she read about called Simple Things. We got the impression from the girl at the Marriott that it was a lunch place and just went looking for something good looking. We found a place that we could see into the basement through small windows that was crowded and filled with wine bottles. Took a while trying to find the entrance and the sign was hard to read behind planters. The name was "Prostoye Veshchi". I later said to Jacki that that translates into something along the line of Straight Things. It took a smack over the head for me to realize that was the place Jacki was looking for all along. Anyway, the food was great and the waitress had a fun spunky attitude. Definately a recommended stop if you are eating near the Kremlin sometime.
Next morning started at Cafe Mania again. Jacki had the Blini with apples so I had to choose something else. The Blini were so good I had to stick with them and went for cream and strawberries, another hit. We opted for cappuccino instead of the dirt/grass water. It was very good. :) We snacked in the car on the rest of the pecans and some other goodies before being dropped off in front of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. I guess during Soviet times it was demolished to make some kind of structure for Lenin but never got very far. It became the world's largest open air swimming pool until the cathedral was rebuilt.
The intended next stop was the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts so Jacki could see some art work. Learning from our Kremlin mistake, we stopped at a Cafe, had a quick bite with some more cappuccino. It was then off to see the Monet's et.al. An interesting thing that Jacki noticed is that the only protection that some of these million dollar Monet's is that there is a little babushka sitting in the corner ready to pounce if you put your hands all over one. Beware!
