On Our Way - Trip One

So this is it, WE ARE GOING TO MEET OUR GIRLS. Our flight from Jacksonville had to circle and we were an hour late landing at JFK; thinking we only had 8 minutes to get to our connection to Moscow we ran through the airport. Turns out they were late also, we had to wait an hour to board, then another hour on the runway. The flight was full, so our hope of changing seats to one next to window seat were dashed. Seats were not that uncomfortable and dinner was good. Rich and I were able to sleep most of the way to Moscow.
No problem with customs, they barely looked at our passports and not at all at our customs declaration form. Sheremetyevo airport is very busy and we had to wait a long time to report missing luggage. Armen, who works for Michael picked us up and took us to Belgrade Hotel. The room is ok, just not $115 ok. The bed is small, but pillows are great. There is no air conditioning and no screens on windows, but there doesn't seem to be any bugs either.

Since we got in early afternoon, we did the tourist thing, Belgrade is at the end of Arbet St., which is a closed pedestrian street with a lot of street vendors, stores and restaurants. There were a lot of people out and we walked all the way to Red Square, but it was closed because of Russian Independence Day.
Outside the Kremlin

St. Basils, next to Red Square is beautiful, I wish we could go inside, maybe next trip won’t be on one of their holidays. I bought a beautiful pen and ink drawing of it for the girls room from an artist on the street.

Saint Basils Cathedral, Moscow, Russia

Since our luggage was lost and weatherunderground.com was wrong about the temperature and we don't have clothing with us for temperatures in the 50s, needed to find something warm to wear. GUM mall is next to Red Square and we went there; it is very elegant and beautiful and we were able to find sweatshirts (a little expensive but warm). We decided to ride the Metro back to the beginning of Arbet St. This is very confusing because no one speaks English and all the signs are in Russian, but we eventually found a guy to help us. Later we had dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe, wait staff spoke English.