Nothing too exciting today ...

Well, today was a day of nothing super exciting. We are getting more used to the time zone, but the sun is up quite a bit longer here so that still messes with us. It makes it seem earlier than it really is. Right now the sky is still blue and pretty light out at 8:30 pm. The sun doesn't really go down until about 10 pm.

We had lunch today at a little German restaurant near the hotel. We were not 100% sure what to expect as we hadn't gone there before (during our very short first trip). It was surprisingly very good. They served a basket of bread and soft pretzels (the pretzels were good). The menus are in Russian but have a shorter English translation of each dish. I ordered grilled chicken and Heather got 'backed' chicken (meant to be baked chicken). I also ordered a side of mashed potatoes with apple, onion and bacon to see what they were like. Both chicken dishes were very good, although my mashed potatoes were only ok. We'll probably go there again now that we know there is at least one thing we will each get. We will probably stay away from the meals revolving around rabbit or reindeer or tongue of something to be safe. They had some tasty sounding desserts like apple streudel, so maybe we'll go there for a snack.

The temperature here is a little cooler than Moscow, usually about 50 F with a breeze at times. Given the late nature of the daytime the warmest part of the day is later than we would normally have. It hasn't been the best weather to walk around the city, but we are going to look at doing that tomorrow or this weekend as the weather is supposed to warm up. On our way to the orphanage it was actually very windy. We stopped at a supermarket near the orphanage so our translator could run in and get something. We were sitting in the car waiting and the wind was rocking the car around. 

We were actually told yesterday that if the weather is nicer (warmer) when we visit that we could take Baby Boy outside. That would be neat. It might not happen tomorrow since we are going so early, but maybe on Monday.

Well, that's it for now. More to post tomorrow after our visit and maybe with the Victory Day celebrations going on. They celebrate both May 1 (May Day) and May 9 (Victory Day for WWII), although Friday will be for observing Victory Day. Hopefully we can get out and wander around and take pictures. Sorry for nothing much so far in that sense.