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Now, why haven’t I blogged about all the ballets I’ve watched in Russia?  And I’ve watched quite a few  too – Giselle, Don Quixote (both at the Stanislavsky Theater in Moscow), and The Fountain of Bakhchisarai at the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg.  I guess it’s because I’d just repeat myself and tell you guys how absolutely heart-wrenching it is, how fabulous the form and the grace of the Russian ballerinas, how precise and perfect the production, how beautiful the music, how magnificent the sets!  Oh, as the song from The Chorus Line  goes… everything is beautiful at the ballet.  Especially Russian ballet.

So we watched Zolushka or Cinderella,  composed by Sergei Prokofiev, at the Stanislavsky Theater last Friday.

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Its Christmas day today in Russia, where the Russian Orthodox Church follows the Julian Calendar and the date of the Nativity is January 7.  Here’s the Red Square and GUM (Moscow’s glitzy department store) all spruced up for Christmas.

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St. Basil’s Cathedral, Moscow, Russia

You should know by now, after my last few posts, that I’m a latte addict (adik! adik!).  I need my fix right after my lunch.  But I do make this consumer-trap media-hype of a coffee drink worth it with my ritual of taking a nice long walk after lunch to a nice coffee shop, and creating an idyllic rustic scene for myself by bringing out my notebook and writing by hand to my heart’s content while sipping my sugar-laden coffee drink.  Today, I walked along Arbat, Moscow’s most popular street – Bohemian walking street lined with cafes, shops, galleries, pastel-colored townhouses, tattoo parlors, and where artists display their wares and sketch your portraits, musicians senerade passersby with violins or balalaikas (traditional stringed Russian instrument), and other street performers.

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All I wanted was to buy tickets to watch the ballet at the newly-opened Bolshoi Theater.  But we tried Nutcracker Suite, Sleeping Beauty and the opera, Turandot – no tickets!  It was quite a feat actually – just to find out that there were no tickets, as the lady at the kassa (box office) couldn’t speak English and it took me a while to find out that Russian for Sleeping Beauty is Spyashchaya Krasavitsa.  How do tourists manage to watch anything in Moscow??!!!! Russians watch operas and ballets the way Filipinos watch movies, it’s amazingly difficult to get tickets to anything.  Anyway, we just decided to brave the snow and walked to Ploshad Teatralnaya (Theater Square) in front of the Bolshoi to take photos.

We’ve actually took a lot of the pictures of the Bolshoi in the past whenever we bring relatives and friends.  But it’s the first time we’re here at night and it’s all lit up.  The Bolshoi was closed for six years for renovation, and we’re just lucky to be here in Moscow and have the opportunity to be able to attend a ballet or opera.  But it’s just so hard to get tickets.  Never fear because we will persevere.

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Hibernation mode off! I decided to shed my PJs, get off my butt and go for a walk. It’s insane because it’s -2, feels like -7 Celsius outside, overcast and windy, and why the heck would I want leave the comfort of my warm toasty apartment.  But it is always nice to either walk or drive around Moscow in the first week of the year because the Muscovites are all on vacation out of town or out of the country and I pretty much have the whole city to myself. No work, lots of time on my hands – I thought that I’d think big and have a grand destination for my afternoon walk – the closest MacCafe, acheche. Well, in fairness, it is a pretty walk. First, I had to cross the Moscow River:

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PJ weekend sure sounds nicer than couch potato weekend or bum weekend.  Besides, Honey gave me luxurious PJs for Christmas so it’s a wonderful excuse to do the Avatar: The Last Airbender marathon – not the movie, but the Nickelodeon TV series.  So nice to wake up as late as I want to and have brunch all ready for me – I was pushing for breakfast in bed but that would be bordering on domestic abuse.

Chef Honey, inspired by our Michelin-dinner in Rome, prepared gourmet New Year media noche for me:

Foie gras on caramelized apples

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I know someone who goes to mass regularly… every Christmas, that is.  I get it though.  It’s not always easy to go to mass regularly when you’re in a country where the English mass is only once a week. When you miss that particular one, that’s it.  I remember also when I was based in Manila and I was traveling so much for work, and my travels would encroach on my weekends.  I would give incenses and flowers to the Buddha in the Shwedagon Pagoda in Myanmar, pray to Allah in the Brunei Airlines flight to , and observe Ramadan fasting in Jakarta… but would find difficulty finding a church on Sundays.

But Simbang Gabi (Christmas eve vigil mass, and not the nine mornings Simbang Gabi) is one mass that is too entrenched in my family tradition and which I hate to miss.  Of course I would miss the wonderful singing of my choir in Kamuning, but I was happy that they had a Simbang Gabi here in Moscow at the Immaculate Conception Cathedral.

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I joined this Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month) for the second time.  It was a more of a blob than a novel (read unpublishable for being too corny and illogical), but I did write 50,000 words in one month. And that’s on top of work, choir rehearsals, badminton and dancing lessons.   So… yey!

We bumped into Nino, the guy who was managing our B&B, at the elevator. Honey looked dashing in his brand new suit. I also got myself dressed up, maked-up and stockinged up. Nino winked at Honey and said, “You’re going to the discoteca?”

Hahaha… that cracked me up. Dressing up means that we’re going to the disco? What are we? Twenty?! Actually, it was our date night. Honey thought that he’d take me to a fancy-shmancy Michelin-star restaurant, complete with a fancy-schmancy snooty maitre d’, fancy-schamncy wine glasses and crystals and chandeliers. He loves watching cooking shows and he’s a fan of Mario Batalli and Gordon Ramsey. And he’s always dreamt of being a Michelin-star chef. But since he’s stuck in a bureaucratic government job, he couldn’t be a Michelin-star chef. So he thought that he’d just bring me to a Michelin-star restaurant. Good excuse, too, to show off his new Italian suit.

As for me, before I met Honey, the only Michelin I knew was the flubber guy, better known as the Michelin man.

As luck would have it, there was a Michelin-star restaurant just a few dozen meters away from our B&B -the Mirabelle. We did have to climb up this steep hill on a cobbled street – and I was wearing bloody heels! But when we went atop the 7th floor the Hotel Splendid Royale, into the restaurant, and out to the terrace – magic!

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