Uzbek Goodness

 While we were lodging our friend Nicole and her broken leg, she needed to go downtown to the candy store to get candy to take back to the States.  We decided to do lunch downtown, too, at Caravan.  We hadn't been there for a while, and the decor of little tents hadn't changed.  All three of us ordered tea, and we were served tea and what I know as chruscki from my Polish American side and jam as sweetener.  There were cherry and apricot jams, and both were excellent.  We ended up going through two full pots of tea.

What's a Moldovan lunch without pickles?  So we ordered some.

I had salad, a manty, and chuchvara soup.  I love chuchvara!  It's got a very good lamb broth with little tortellini type things filled with meat in it.  The broth has a very rich texture to it.

Andreas and Nicole both had pilaf.  The pilaf is fluffy and full of pine nuts, pomegranate, raisins, meat, and other good things.

Old To New Architecture

 These few photos document a two block walk going from the old city gates to the new shopping mall by the train station.  It's far enough apart that it's not jarring to go from so old to so new.

Getting Some Greek On

 El Greco is our go to Greek restaurant in Chisinau.  We order from them regularly and they deliver to the embassy!  On this night in May, we went to the restaurant to eat.  Andreas had his usual salad, pita, and tzatziki thing.  I had soup.  We split a chicken gyro plate.  The food was as tasty as usual, with the tzatziki having little bits of cucumber and the chicken being moist and herbed well.

Making It Round

I've got more blanket stitch around the grape leaf.  It's going faster than I feared.  My current worry is cat hair.  Cats are evil, and when I leave this out for my husband to take a photo of, his black cat tries to sit on it.

Old City Architecture

Krakow's old town is partially enclosed by a city wall; there are three photos of it at the bottom of this post.  All the rest of the buildings here are inside it.  Most buildings look to be seventeenth to eighteenth century; the city is built on successive ruins of older versions.  Some current buildings' ground floors are now below ground because of the raising of roads.  Most of the roads are cobbled, and there are many sculptures and tiles to brighten the buildings.

All But...

I now have all but the bottom of the monogram done.  Very easy stitch.

Flying Back To The Pig

On the same rainy day as the Mi Piace lunch, Andreas and I went to The Flying Pig for dinner.  We had our pots of tea,  an appetizer plate, some goulash (wonderful and a meal in itself), and sauerbraten and chicken.  We enjoy this place with its friendly, competent service and great food.  Did I mention that both the mustard and goulash were spicy?