The Gala Was

My Personal Violist

Cindy Jamming with the Quartet

The Gala was just that, a gala.  It started strong with Cindy and her quartet playing for about ninety minutes as everyone arrived, changed shoes, and stood in line to check coats, shoes and other odds and ends. They were just great and I’ve a photo or two that you can enjoy.  

The Hotel Lotte is really a five star place and the service and atmosphere was top shelf. Accomplished wait staff were walking around with ice-cold glasses of Russian sparkling wine, which was really excellent. There were three bars set up in the foyer so that if you wanted soft drinks or juice or beer it was all available.  By three almost everyone was there (the second bus from our housing area didn’t get there until four, two hours late!) and they opened up the doors to the buffet area where a teacher choir was blasting out Christmas songs. They were really very, very good.  There were an additional two bars in the buffet area where they were now serving very good Chilean wines and Italian beer on tap, in addition to more sparkling wine.  There were printed menus on all of the stand up tables, which gave us a sneak peek as to what was on the buffet. It all looked great and as soon as the teachers were done singing and the director gave his welcome, they opened the buffet and the lines were immense.  There must have been about two hundred and fifty people there, half Russian, half English speakers.  If you had just come in from the outside you would never in a million years have guessed that this was a holiday party for a K-12 school. It was, as is everything AAS does, quite classy.

As soon as they opened the buffet lines, the band started playing and that was it for me. I think I danced to every song in every set. Most of the time with Cindy but I was in great demand and danced with lots and lots of the single teachers.  By the time the band took its first break most of the food had been eaten so I picked at some salmon and rice and some excellent lamb stew, but then the band started with some more disco music and I as on the floor again. I was one big soggy mess by the time they called us for the bus, but my, it was a grand evening.

Ratatouille with Poached Egg

The route that the bus took to the hotel took twenty minutes since he had to go over the Moscow River Bridge to turn around and go under the bridge and back over it just to get on the correct side of the street.  My illegal U-Turn when I’d dropped Cindy off had saved us fifteen minutes.  Coming home the driver really didn’t know where he was going but I kept my mouth shut and enjoyed the long ride.  (No he didn’t – he kept telling me what the driver should have done, where he should have turned, etc.  And of course he was right!) I made some grilled cheese sandwiches on French bread when we got home since we were both a bit hungry and then it was right to bed since Cindy had another early morning.

I mostly did laundry today and I got in an hour walk, which almost froze my face off, but it was good to be out there and moving.  I can walk pretty fast, but with the sidewalks filled with ice and slush I’m a bit more careful, so it always amazes me how these young women with four-inch heel boots and waist length jackets come zipping by me on the sidewalk.  Speaking of sidewalks, they do a great job of cleaning them off but what they do is toss the snow onto the street curb, which has the unintended consequence of narrowing both sides of the street so that what had been a two lane road is now just one and the game of who will back up first to let the other person’s car pass is not pretty to watch.

Time to go work up a risotto, ciao, Cindy and Wm

PS: Why I like walking the streets of Moscow