Sunday, September 14, 2008

It's actually Monday morning now. We couldn't get an internet connection last night. But here is Sunday's post just the same. We'll have a new one this evening, hopefully.

Since it is Sunday, we were on our own today. We decided to skip the breakfast here at the hotel and just ate breakfast in our room. After breakfast, Greg was doing some things on the Internet. The air was on in the room and I was getting cold. Surprise! I decided to walk outside while Greg finished up. While I was sitting out there, I met a couple that was here from Germany. They spoke English! They had adopted a beautiful, 17 month old little girl. They are only in Astrakhan for three more days and then they head to Moscow to finish up at their Embassy. They were so nice. It was great to have a conversation with someone in English!

We ate lunch in the room also. Then we decided to go for a walk. We walked along the water as far as the path went. There was a pedestrian bridge that crossed the water. We crossed that and continued back along the water on the other side. As we were walking, we came across a noise that sounded like a kitten crying. We found a little white kitty with really blue eyes stuck up in a tree about 8 feet high. Greg found a branch down by the water and we propped one end on the tree and held the other end a few feet off the ground so the kitty could climb down. Yay! The kitty was saved!

Having done our good deed for the day, we continued along the water and turned down one street and after walking a few blocks, found a beautiful surprise. There was a very nice waterfront area. There was a beach where people were swimming. It was a beautiful view of the Volga. We continued walking down the riverfront to the Azimut Hotel. It has been under construction, so we weren’t able to stay there, but we’ve heard a lot about it. We went inside just to look at the lobby. It was completely under construction. We didn’t stay long because there wasn’t much to see. We’d been walking for a couple of hours now and getting a little tired. We headed back to our room for a drink of cold water!

We decided to walk to dinner. The Chocolate Café had been recommended to us, so we thought we’d give it a try. I would definitely recommend it. They have easy-to-read English menus and the food was really good! We were stuffed and didn’t have room for dessert, but the desserts looked wonderful! Not only was the food good, but no one was smoking! We didn’t even see ashtrays on the tables! It wasn’t dark yet, so we walked back to the hotel.

That’s pretty much our day! We hope to know tomorrow about issue number two. It’s all we can think about. Everything has just got to work out!!!!!!!