Around town; July 22

Mila made one of her rare forays into the center of town on Sunday, when we went for a walk with our friends from Williams, Anna and Ian, who are in town.

We started from Pushkinskaya. Here is Mila with her mom and the Metal Man (that's Pushkin, if you haven't read Bulgakov).

Here's Mila enjoying the sites on Tverskoi Bulvar.

The view of the apartment block at Kudrinskaya Square, one of the seven Stalinist skyscrapers that ring the city center, as seen looking west on Bolshaya Nikitskaya Ulitsa.

We stopped for an early dinner at the Starry Phaeton, an Armenian place that has put tables in the courtyard of an old mansion that allegedly was the one Tolstoy' had in mind for the Rostov's Moscow house in War and Peace.

Here's Kudrinskaya in the setting sun, looking east from Ulitsa Krasnaya Presnya.

And here is Mila in her carriage in front of the monument to the heroes of the 1905 Revolution, with her trusty Octopus sidekick looking on.