beautiful

My favorite time here is early in the morning, the streets are usually quiet, the traffic lite, and once in a while a beautiful sunrise comes through the clouds.

Vladimir Feltsman

Last weekend we went to the Marinsky Concert Hall to see a piano concert from a world famous pianist, Vladimir Feltsman (click here to learn more about him).





We have now been to the concert hall a couple of times, and we have tickets for a few more concerts in the next few months, we really do enjoy the evenings out.

We also brought along a flat Stanley who traveled here from his elementary school classroom in Illinois to see the concert, we hope flat Stanley enjoys his time with us.

A step back

After the disappearance of our beer garden in front of the house, and the turn south that our weather has recently taken there are fewer and fewer reasons to be excited about going outside. Another nail in the coffin showed up a couple of days ago. Remember how excited we were to see the removal of the scaffolding and construction equipment from the building next to ours in the spring? If you don't you can read the refresher here. Well long story short, while it is not as annoying as scaffolding there is definetly something about the wood covering over the sidewalk being built next door that screams the construction is not quite done yet.

Salmon

We love our salmon dinners and are so excited about how abundant fresh salmon is here But this is the only place I have lived where I remember having to scale salmon before we eat it, if I don't the scales seem to get everywhere inside the oven and on the fish.

the best from Korea

On a recent trip to the really big grocery store just outside of the city, Nikki discovered something that she hadn't seen in a few years. If any of you have ever talked to Nikki about her trips to Korea when I was stationed there a few years ago no doubt she would have told you about her favorite drink in Korea, aloe water. Well low and behold guess what Nikki discovered at the grocery store.

Ch, Ch, Changes

This is a picture of the square in front of our apartment. It is quite grandiose, but something is missing. Just two weeks ago it was the site of our favorite summertime afternoon hangout, the outdoor beer garden.

Seriously, our last day in the beer garden was 20Sep, it was just a couple of weeks ago.

What a difference a week makes, as this picture was taken last week, we are now waiting patiently for the city to turn the heat on, as it is just plain cold here.