Moscow Impressions...

Moscow was amazing! I flew in on Saturday afternoon/evening and struggled to stay awake as the driver took me to our hotel. I'm not sure why I was so tired! I arrived at the hotel around 6:00 to find Kristin laying in bed. Good, we were both exhausted! It was a great hotel and so fun to see Kristin! We just talked and had wine tasting and dinner at the hotel the first night, and tried to figure our what we might want to do for our time in Moscow. Neither of us had an agenda, which was great, and were pretty much up for anything. We decided to head towards the Red Square and The Kremlin the first day, but first stopped at this cute local place that we just found while walking towards the center of town. It was delicious!

The Red Square, St. Basil's Cathedral, The History Museum, GUM Shopping Mall and The Kremlin, including the State Armory, were amazing. Every time I glanced at the Cathedral, it just took my breath away! I think we walked about a million miles. We also saw a Russian Circus, I'm pretty sure it would not have passed any US standards as far as animal rights, but it was very cool. They did this huge water finale, that was pretty amazing. A few of the animals looked pretty mad though... We also went to the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Cathedral of Christ the Redeemer, Gorky Park, which was supposed to be like Central Park, but seemed a bit run down, saw the old KGB building and also the Bolshoy Theater, which was beautiful at night. Red Square at night was pretty amazing too. I think I took about a million photos. We toured the metro stations one day, they were beautiful and so clean. We went out for some great meals, my personal favorite was finding a Mexican place, Casa Agave... it was SO delicious! Nachos, chile margarita and tacos... what more could I ask for! The best part of the whole trip was spending time with my sister and just walking around the city. It was so different than what I expected. It was way more beautiful, I was expecting a grim and dark city and instead found a beautiful city, with gorgeous buildings and churches, it was amazingly clean, the people were not outwardly friendly, but helpful when we looked lost and confused, the shops were all top of the line and the malls reminded me of Dubai, super fancy. We spent a fair bit of our time relaxing in the hotel too. It was truly an amazing city and experience! I would definitely recommend Moscow to anyone, would love to go back and it made me want to go see St. Petersburg too.

It was really nice to have time in Moscow and still have a few days to relax in Vienna before going back to work. I went to a Pumpkin Festival yesterday with Amy and her kids, it was awesome, I LOVE stuff like that. Then Steve and I just hung out and went to our favorite Italian place for dinner... life is just easy right now.

And, what's nice, is it is only Saturday afternoon...

The fun continues...

I just can't believe how great this Fall has been! Claudia and I had a great time on our little road trip. What I'd like to know, is why when the Garmin says "off road" and we are literally in the forest on a rough, dark, dirt road, we listen. Ha! Then we arrived to our hotel, only to find out that we only had reservations for the Saturday night. They had a hostel room available. Hilarious. It all worked out just fine, but I will say, the bathroom was more than a little scary and the bunk beds were quite funny. I wouldn't say I am particularly artsy and the town was supposedly artsy, we found some cool ceramic places, ate some great food and had some good wine. Then, we stopped in Durnstein on the way home and hiked around a bit and stumbled our way into this really cool festival and had some wine and pumpkin soup. It was an awesome afternoon. Work is really busy and the days are just flying by. I signed up for an 80km trail run that ends at the Eiffel Tower in March and am also signed up for the Nice Ironman in June. I tried to work out how I would train for both, but decided to leave it to the experts and hired someone to develop a program for me and this online training/coaching thing. So far it is going ok. She cut back my training hours a ton, so I am sneaking in runs and adding in extra minutes to what she does have me doing. And, half of it is in German, so it's been a bit tough, but I think I will eventually get used to the German and also I think soon she will catch up to the amount of training I want to be doing, till then I'll just continue to lie a little. Ha! I do really like having a point to every workout. I also tried cross fit the other day, very fun. I'd like to do more of it, we'll see if I can fit it in. Weekly dinner with some friends, weekends filled with sun and pumpkin soup, great training, life is going pretty well. I am for some reason just loving life in Vienna these days. I still can't stand the people and find them rude, but maybe I'm just getting better at ignoring them. Yesterday was Ironman Kona, loved watching it! I was going to go over to a friend's and watch it, but somehow going for Dr. Falafel and a bit of shopping turned into a Wein and Co. afternoon, followed by nachos at Champions American Bar. Delicious. Next weekend I am meeting Kristin in Moscow, can't wait!