!SNOW!

Busy, busy, busy! Today we went to Ismailovski Market (locally known as Ismailova and pronounced Ish-my-lo-va). Basically a craft market with some antiques too about an hours drive NE of the city. A haven for Stage managers as Mike rightly pointed out.

It snowed over night last night so it was all fresh. First snow we'd seen fall. There hasn't been any in Moscow city for ages. There was some at Sergey Posad but that was out of the city.

After trapesing round in the freezing cold for an hour and buying various Matryoshka dolls and woolly socks we decided our feet had had enough and returned to the city for a well earned coffee and some food at 'Coffee Mania'. This is my Mum and Step-dad's oasis when life in Moscow gets too much. The coffee is beautiful. Way better than Starbucks or Costa Coffee. However, not the cheapest place either. I think they are well aware that they serve 'the best' coffee in Moscow and thus exploit it knowing people will pay!

Also visited The Kremlin. Still has some working parliament buildings within its walls but mostly churches and museums. The Armoury was pretty spectacular. Unfortunately there were also a load of security around who insisted that people only crossed the road at the zebra crossing and used a whistle and the pointing method if anyone tried to ignore this. You'd happily be wandering along and somewhere far off in the distance you'd hear a whistle blow and turn around to find a guard waving at you in quite an aggressive manor. Deciding we'd had enough of being bullied we headed out only got a little confused as to where we were allowed and where we weren't and ended up being whistled at even more so waited while one guard sauntered as slowly as possible over to us so we could ask how the hell to get out of the place.

Revisited Red Square for the 2nd time so we could take some night shots and then continued home. Sophie and I got slightly lost due to Mike running off ahead with all the maps but we made are way eventually. Only got a few worried texts from my mum asking where we were and were we ok since Mike got back way before us. Of course!!On to St Petersburg (or St Pete's as they all call it here) on wed we think. Sophie leaves us sadly tomorrow to return to the hum drum of life and work in London.

Did you know…..According to the results of experiments carried out on mice by the University of New Jersey and the Japanese National Cancer Research Institute, the daily consumption of green tea would halt the growth of 87% of skin cancers, 58% of stomach cancers and 56% of lung cancers! (Useful but of knowledge for you. Or useless depending on how you look at it!).

Until the next time!................