Take a walk with us

This morning Natasha and I took a short walk, more or less around the block.  It was about 40 minutes, door-to-door.

We left the Embassy compound and walked towards the large bridge crossing over to Kutuzovsky Prospekt, past the White House, a Russian government building. 

From there, we hung a left up Bolshoi Devyatinskiy Pereulok and made our way up the alley, past a piece of pukh tumbleweeding its way down the street ...

... and to our church, which has been under renovations since we arrived last year.

We are our way into the prefab building in front of the church, where they sell all manner of pirozhki.  Natasha particularly likes the cabbage ones.

We continued down the alley until we reached Noviy Arbat.  We paused to check out the tulips and take in the view of the Hotel Ukraina/Radisson across the bridge.

Then my pinky toes, clad in my brand-new sensible-mom walking shoes from Lands End, started to blister.  (Also, does the fact that I think these shoes are really cute make me officially unfashionable?)

We turned around and proceeded up the street, through the skeevy tunnel ...

... and then made a left onto the Garden Ring.  We passed the morning traffic ...

... and a line of many people waiting for their visa interviews at the Embassy (it wrapped around the building and is actually a lot longer than this picture makes it appear).  Some of them, no doubt, have done their homework and have learned through the local Internet forums that they might get a blond, bearded officer who is known as the nice one who asks the weird questions.  (Jeremy likes to test certain applicants - the ones who need to speak decent English in order to qualify for a student exchange visa - by asking them to do simple arithmetic problems).

We proceeded down the Ring, past the corner outside the consular section, where Muscovite fans of Michael Jackson began to leave pictures, flowers, trinkets, and apparently, balloons, following his death.

We passed the Kudrinskaya Ploschad' building (which, along with the Hotel Ukraina, is one of Moscow's Seven Sisters), and its fountain.

We had to walk in the street, because, as you can see, they like to park on the sidewalk here.

And then, because there is no other way to do it unless you want to carry a stroller up and down a sizable staircase, or walk signficantly out of your way, we crossed a busy street without aid of either a crosswalk or a perekhod.  We turned left on Barrikadnaya Street, past this fabulous scooter ...

... past the zoo ...

... and past this truck, advertising Burger King, and advising drivers the next lane over that their cars are under video surveillance.  No idea why.
 

When pressed to decide whether to brave the perekhod ramp, or subject my poor toes to further chafing ...

... we opted to walk an extra few hundred feet to use the over-road crosswalk.

We had precisely 24 seconds to cross.  We needed 21 of them.

We turned left and went back down Krasnaya Presnya, cutting behind the metro station to walk past our favorite produce stand ...

... past the concert billboards ...

... and the free public toilets that were disgusting, but nevertheless welcome when I was pregnant last summer.

We took the crosswalk immediately in front of the Embassy, which, as usual, was overrun with cars stuck in traffic.

And returned home.

The End.