After the Dostoevsky walk we all went to this “Georgian dive,” in Golstein’s words. The hallway and stairs smelled of urine, but the interior was interesting. Very heavy and dark (that's a pic of ceiling up above). We had heard that Georgian food was supposed to be good for vegetarians. But this was Soviet Georgian food, so there was only one dish without meat (a bowl of cold beans). No water, just beer and vodka. Lots of lamb and odd soups. Tania and I were being eaten alive by mosquitoes so we left early after eating only bread, deciding to be patriotic and go to McDonald’s for the 4th. What a good decision that was.

This is Tania at the Georgian dive:


I am not a big fan of McDonald’s in the states, but it was soooo nice to have it here. I didn’t realize how much I hate Russian food until I got a happy meal. And it made me happy. Ordering was a little tricky, until we realized that a lot of the words are the same just cyrillicized (yep, I made up that word, I think). If you can read Cyrillic check out the big tasty ad (биг тейсти, хеппи мил, чикен макнаггетс, картофелный фри).



I had been feeling sick from the Russian food the last few days, and I never would have thought that McDonald’s McNuggets and French fries would do a stomach good. The food is not quite as good as in America, and they have the old school McNuggets that I remember eating as a child. They probably shipped them over frozen to Russia after the fall. Yay capitalism! I miss all American food so much. It’s so uncultured, but I can’t help it. You try living here. I did fine in France.



After getting some 6 ruble ice cream cones (better than the McDonald’s ice cream in the states), we went to the internet café in this mall near the Sadovaya metro. It was really nice and comfortable. They had these amazing cushioned booths that were like beds. It was sunny and clean and we ordered tea and studied and could use the internet. It was wonderful.

We went to Sleeping Beauty in the evening at the Mariinsky, which was good. The dancers were better than in Romeo and Juliet. Although I’m still not that impressed with the male dancers here. The girls are good, even if they all seem to have weak grande allegro (big jumps) and mediocre turns. It was fun to see variations I had learned and practiced a thousand times performed on the stage where Petipa first set the ballet. There are all the fairy variations in the prologue and of course the blue bird pas de deux and variations, if any of you are familiar with the ballet. But I’ll spare you more musings on ballet too.