As you know, we had the pleasure to meet Rob and Dede during our trip 1, when they shared a lot of their adventures in Moscow and tips with us. One of the tips was "if you have time in the next trips, email or call Dinia and Ron. So, the whole week before our departure one of Mark's mission was to contact them. We (well, actually I, but Mark is a tropper) loooooove local craft market, we emailed them on Thrusday night to get better directions to Vernisage Ismailovo by metro. Friday morning, we got a response, and they were kindly offering to meet us on Saturday, take the metro, and go to the market with us!!! Yeah!!!!
As you may imagine, the location to meet was TGI Fridays. Then we head to Abaraskaya metro, took light blue line for 1 stop, changed to dark blue, and 6 stops later, we were at the beginning of a long street heading to the market!!! The street was full of little stands with clothes, accessories, jeans jackets, etc, and there were quite a bit of Russians checking things out. But our goal was the art crafts!
After paying 10 RU to a babushka, we entered the market and the sea of Matrioshka dolls, wooden toys, music boxes, and all sorts of amazing stuff made of wood, crystal, linnen, fur, and other materials were at our reach.
[Mark]: For those of you whose bodies produce testosterone, there were also old Russian and Soviet memorabilia, both original ($$$) and replica ($). And for me the surpise of the day was a section for "surplus US military equipment," which was off in a recessed corner. There were some more male-friendly crafts such as some Matrioska doll-like crafts such as a Cosmonaught inspired wooden rocket set, complete with Cosmonaughts and spacedogs. There were also coins and stamps from the old era Russia.
By 4:00 pm we were ready to go back to the metro and head home. This time we got into a newer metro train that clearly showed where we were. And then Ron and Dinia surprised us again with more of their kindness: they wanted to take us for dinner to their favorite russian restaurant!! So, we headed to a little cafe/bistro with russian/english menu, very yummy good, delicious blini (I was dying to try them!), and great service. We had a wonderful time, sharing our adoption experience with them, learning about their adventures in Russia, Trinidad and Tobago, England, and feeling the good ole American hospitality! Thank you, Ron and Dinia, for a wonderful start of our Trip 2!
7 comments:
I'm so glad to hear you have had such a great start to your trip. We definetly plan on calling them for our 3rd trip. My mother in law is going with us on trip 3 and I think it would be fun for all of us to meet up and see Russia.
Enjoy your visit with Diego tomorrow and good luck at court!!
Sounds like you had a great day! Enjoy your time with your sweet baby tomorrow! I know you're ready to see him!
Yay! So happy to know you made it safe & sound. I would love to get in touch with Ron & Dinia when we're there in a few weeks. If you read this and can email me their email, I would really appreciate it. (Or pass ours on to them).
Enjoy your time with Diego and have a wonderful court experience on Monday!
I'm so glad you made it there safely! Sounds like a market I might need to go visit too. :-) Can't wait to here about your reunion!
I'm so glad you got to meet up with Ron & Dinia. They are such a nice couple. Looks like you found some cool things at the market.
So glad you guys hooked up with Ron & Dinia. They're terrific folks!
And I'm jealous that you made it to Gogol Mogol and had the blinis - I'll just bet they had strawberries on 'em too!
So great that you braved into the Metro. It's kinda tricky getting back into the Arbatskaya terminal, but overall, it's quite an impressive transit system.
Can't wait to see photos of your visit with Diego!
Nice to see you are having a good time and got there safe. Good luck with rest of your trip.
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