Day 2 – 17th June 2005 – RAIN in MOSCOW! Woke about 10 and went down to reception to try to upgrade our room – a bit of a pong in the bathroom!  We ate a fab breakfast for 350 rubles (about 10 euro).  We missed the free courtesy bus to the metro so ordered a taxi instead.  We tried to read the map but the Russian alphabet is so different!  We met a friendly policeman who sent us the wrong way on the metro!! Oops!!  We eventually noticed that we were heading out of the city and not into the city (about half hour later!)   We eventually got back to where we started from and had to start all over again.  We reached the City Centre at 1pm.  Ulia met us in the city and brought us to a booth in the middle of the street to change our money (1 euro to 34.4 rubles).  We then walked to the Kremlin where we met Dima.  Oh my God what a sight, even the miserable rain couldn’t dampen our spirit.  It is an amazing place.  We will do the tour on Monday when we have more time.  We walked around the perimeter past the tomb of the unknown warrior to Red Square.  It is huge and RED!  Moscow is a vibrant colorful alive city.  It is not the drab poor grey city we expected.  The city in undergoing a major facelift and will be the place to bee soon.  It is expensive, nothing cheap about Moscow.  Now for lunch, Moscow doesn’t do restaurants.  We eventually found one and had a great feed.  It was now time to return to the hotel and prepare for tonight’s classes. There were 40 plus ready to dance and three hours ahead of me!  Ulia did some warm-ups and then introduced and in my best Russian I said hello and I am an Irish dance teacher! Talk about stating the obvious!  There were some really good dancers and I am looking forward to tomorrow’s class.  Tonight we did primary and advanced reel. We are now relaxing after our pancakes – yes again! And of course don’t forget the Vodka Absolute! G’night talk to you tomorrow.