We spent the day walking around Moscow. After our complimentary hotel breakfast, that is. And look who joined us at breakfast…

James Naismith! I picked a table close to the buffet, not too close to other people. I looked up halfway through breakfast and there he was. Rock Chalk Jayhawk!

We walked down to Red Square.

Aaron standing in front of the State History Museum.

First thing we did was go into St. Basil’s.

Me in front of St. Basil’s.

We did not take photos inside, because you have to pay an extra amount to do that. It is so hard to take good photos of a beautiful place like that, so we chose not to. There are tons of photos online if you google “St. Basil’s inside”. It is very, very beautiful.

Can you tell it was not such a nice day? It was warm, but rained all day.

The Kremlin.

The Tomb of the Unknown Solider, outside the Kremlin. We only caught the end of this changing of the guard ceremony.

Looking at the Kremlin, acrossing Alexander Garden. The Grotto, according to wikipedia, is fake.

This is the view from on top of the Grotto. We did a geocache up here.

The Bolshoy Theater.

I am not sure how much walking we did, but I think we left the hotel around 10:30, stopped for lunch around 3(the first time we sat down all day!), and got back to our hotel room at 4. We ate lunch at “Il Patio”. Il Patio is a chain Italian Restaurant which we ate at in Kiev. I would have preferred a different restaurant unique to Moscow, but I wanted Italian food and there it was. They have every chain here, or so it seems. Starbucks, KFC, Of course McDonalds, Wendy’s, Burger Kings, Sbarro. We also saw lots of stores we recognized, most of them upscale stores.

Tomorrow, we will meet “Helen”!