Tons of Pictures to Come

Between our pictures and Lori and Antoine's, we have a ton of great shots. Even if you do not count the hundreds of great kid pictures we took! For not doing as much blatantly touristy stuff, we sure got some great pics of Moscow!

I will try to organize the posts a little bit to keep the blog coherent. These are a collection of shots in and around the Hotel Ukraina.

We really like being at that Hotel. The rooms haven't changed much since the times it was built and you can just feel some of the Soviet era in them and in the building itself. Besides the Hotel iteself, the location is great. It is convenient to court, the US embassy, our facilitator's office, the Metro, and grocery stores. Court, the facilitator's, and another Metro excursion will be separate posts.

Here's the four of us from the first night. We're at the observation deck just outside the "Under the Spear" bar on the 31st floor. It was a nice place to hang out after a long day.

The weather was greatly improved since the last trip so we took more time walking the area around the hotel at night. There are various statues, shops, restaurants, and apartments in the vicinity of the Ukraina. We got some great late evening pictures in the twilight.

It is rare for me to miss a chance at taking a picture of the old symbols when I can. Not that I am a commie, just a lot of those historical symbols were removed after the collapse of Communism. Yet they still linger here and there to serve as reminders of the past. The first five pointed star was taken from the observation deck. The second one was taken on one of our morning walks. It was on a bridge that crosses the Moscow River.

This was the view from Lori and Antoine's room. Our view wasn't as good as this and not nearly as good as the one we had on the first trip.


Here are a couple shots from a morning walk. Lori and Antoine pose with the Hotel Ukraina in the background. New owners began managing the hotel last fall. Part of the grand plan is to renovate the hotel to make the rooms more luxurious. This is an overall trend with hotels in Moscow. The Communist era hotels are being destroyed or gutted to make room for more expensive hotels. The recent destruction/closing of three hotels has removed a LOT of inexpensive rooms from Moscow. It makes adoption trips much more expensive! Oh well. That's the price of progress I imagine.


Lori took this amazing picture of the Russian White House reflecting in the Moscow River with the excellent morning light casting a nice glow.


This is a big globe just outside the elevator on the third floor. We wondered if the globe was a hold over from the Communist period, displaying proudly the "Big Family" of the former USSR. It turns out to be post-Communist, showing proudly the "Smaller Family" of the Russian Federation and the now independent Soviet Republics.

This is a billboard advertising Lori's favorite cigarettes. Lori doesn't smoke. Her last name is Muratta so she likes them only because of the name.