Our Russian Travels

For those of you following along at home, here's a map of Russia, with place tags in all four cities we visited: St Petersburg, Arkhangelsk (where the court hearing was), Kotlas (where Elena lived), and Moscow.

Or click here to view our travels in a larger map.

The interactive map here is fun because it gives a sense of scale--there are hundreds of miles between each of the four cities, but within each city we walked around to see the sights.

I'm a manly man (or: Food Preferences, Part II)

When we have canned coffee, we buy Cafe du Monde.  It's a strong, dark roast cut with chickory, and intended to to be served as cafe au lait (mixed half-and-half with milk).  I'm a manly man, though, and I drink my coffee straight and black.  The Cafe du Monde is pretty dark and bitter that way, but I like my coffee like that.

So we were sitting around in the morning after breakfast, and Elena wanted to try what Dad was drinking.  My coffee was cool by then, and I knew there was no way she'd like such a strong bitter flavor, so I gave her a taste.

Of course she liked it, and immediately demanded her own cuppa joe.

Conclusion: I'm approximately as manly as a two-year-old girl.

Food preferences

For anyone who is or has been the parent of a toddler, the notion that the kid has his or her own food preferences isn't surprising.  We were a little concerned, however, because Elena presumably has a set of preferences that we we're not familiar with.  So far, though, we're doing OK as we discover things she already likes, or new things she's excited about.  The approved list isn't all that surprising: oatmeal, milk, fruit juice, most fruit, peanut butter, bread, eggs, stuff like that.

Supposedly, though, she ate fish in Russia, and so far we haven't found any fish or seafood she likes...with one exception.

The last few days we were in Moscow, we ordered a lot of room service, because it was convenient and private, if not overly cheap.  For one supper, I ordered a "cold fish" appetizer, with an assortment of four cold fishy treats. (Preserved fish seems to be more common, and cheaper, in Russia than here in hte US.)  I offered Elena a taste of each.

Did she like the sweetened eel (actually pretty good: think like Chinese sweet and sour meats)?  I thought kids have a sweet tooth, and she might like it. Nope, she spit it out.

Did she like the smoked salmon?  It was mild and soft, and seemed like the perfect fish for a toddler. Nope, she spit it out..

Did she like the salted cod?  A little strongly salted, but she might like the salt.  Nope, she spit it out.

So what did she like? This:

Yup; she loved the fresh caviar.

I checked prices yesterday here in the US: an ounce of tinned caviar goes for about $8.50 (or $136 a pound).  Fresh caviar is $30 an ounce: $480 a pound.