The American Embassy and a walk on Arbat street

Yesterday was our American Embassy day. Since we got picked up at 1:00pm there wasn't so much time to do anything special in the morning so we played in the play room where we met Sidney, a little girl with her mother from Toronto.  Both Hannah and Ivan love the playroom and played nicely with Sidney.

The embassy visit went very smooth.  There were several other US families with kids varying from 17 months to 11 years.  Each family got called individually for an 'interview' which meant that we had to check the spelling of the name (the Russian passport spelling will very probably be wrong since it is writting phonetically) and make sure that we understood the post-adoption reports.  No big deal. We got the visa in the passport within an hour.

So it was only 3pm when we got back to the hotel and decided to go to the famous Arbat street. If you need souvenirs, you can find them there for sure. It is the only place I actually have seen souvenir shops except for the museum shop at the Kremlin.  I really love that of Moscow.  We did buy a russian outfit for both kids as a souvenir, some postcards and a few knicknacks.  (Donna, we looked for the blue olympic toy but it was nowhere to be found.  Plenty chebarashka's but not the blue one).

For dinner we went to My-my (Moo-moo), a sort of caferia style restaurant with fabulous food for next to nothing (we paid $15 for a dinner for the 4 of us!).  And very kid friendly. There is one on Arbat street and one very close to the hotel.  We'll definitely go back there one day before we leave.

Both kids were dead tired after the meal and a nasty wind had picked up so instead of walking back we took a cab. Ivan was in the stroller so he would have been fine but Hannah would not have made it home.   When back at the hotel we even skipped bath and but the kids right in bed without  any protest.  That shows how tired they were since so far the first word they stay when we get back in the room after dinner is 'bath'.