Power breakfast at the National/65th anniversary prep

Lenin stayed here.  He must have been the first limousine liberal.  The National Hotel has a ringside seat on Red Square.  I cannot imagine coming to Moscow and staying anywhere else.  The Ritz Carlton is just behind and has had to sprout a skyline bar to look over the National. 

I just had breakfast with the most international group watching the prep for this weekend's celebration.  Talked with charming young Japanese woman to lives in Luxembourg, my Italian friends were there, two brits gobbling eggs and bacon and who knows where the rest were from.  Yesterday there was an oligarch on the blackberry talking about a $10 Mil deal in Tanzania and how he was flying by private plane to London in a few hours.  Today it was much quieter just the plunk plunk of messages received on BB and lots of thumb activity.

The activity in the Square has really ramped up overnight.  There are now horses circling in formation, load of trucks with warheads.  Many veterans with rows of medals, wreaths heaped at the tomb of the unknown.  The road outside is closed and just watched a personage stride along with woman behind him carrying his umbrella.   A camera is high in the sky on wires and goes back and forth.

Enough!  I'm there   Off to see what is going on.  This time 65 years ago my father was on his way home from the Middle East and my mother and two grandmothers were mopping up after the blitz.  Russia/USSR was descending with its iron curtain.

TTFN