Trip 3 Day 3

Today was a mix of a pretty productive day out and about and a nice relaxing day in for us. 

We had a delicious breakfast this morning! I always miss the breakfast they provide when we go home. I had some cold cuts (turkey, salami) and cheese, pickles, a soft boiled egg, fresh cucumber, grilled tomato sprinkled with basil, sausages (little hot dogs), crepes, and half a grapefruit. YUMMY! They had quite the variety, so I will be trying some more things tomorrow morning.

We were picked up from the hotel at 8am and off the the government office to request Rush's passport. They open the doors at 9am, but it takes awhile to drive ANYWHERE in this beautiful city, due to all the traffic jams, and we wanted to be as close to the front of the line as possible. 

This government office is a refurbished/re-purposed, 200 year old factory that used to make many different fabrics. We were told it is pretty unique in its architectural design...its "industrial" with all the exposed duct work on the ceiling. This is something that is not common here. I thought they did such a wonderful job remodeling the building, perfect balance between maintaining much of the original design mixed with the modern industrial feel. We got in line, and the line slowly weaved its way down the hall and up the stairs. We were given number 83...which was definitely NOT BAD, as we were told sometimes it is very easy to get 100 something. We decided to sit and wait. 

Lining the wall was 25 clouded glass vestibules with electronic reading boards above the doors. We were told our two doors were 219-220 and we waited until our number showed on one of those two doors. I brought my iphone to play some games on while we waited. Mom, our coordinator and I enjoyed Whirly Words for some time, and then our coordinator enjoyed going through all my pictures and vidoes on my phone. 

Then it was our turn! We walked into the little room where there were two desks with two officers sitting at them. The lady officer checked all our documents that we brought, and had me sign a document. Before I knew it, it was done! We were told that is SHOULD  be ready by Friday, but to check the website (which our coordinator will do) that it may not be ready until Sat. 

Before moving on we stopped to have tea...i always have time for a little cup of tea. That is something that I truly miss when we leave too, is the amount of tea i drink here! 

Next we headed to the bank in the building to exchange some money to buy train tickets for Sunday. We had planned to drive to the train station to buy the tickets but noticed an office you could buy them in this building! This saved us another stop and another traffic jam drive across town. We purchased our three train tickets!

We made our way back to our hotel and watched a "chick flick" that we don't always get to watch with our guys at home...Letter from Juliet. Loved it. And enjoyed a cup of Lipton instant chicken noodle soup from bed. Jet lag started to creep up so we decided to take a little two hr nap. We slept hard and had to force ourselves to get up and juices flowing again...convincing ourselves that we could go back to sleep in 4-5 hrs. Darn comfy beds, just wanted to suck us right in. :)

We are heading to dinner right now, as our tummies are starting to grumble! Tomorrow we expect to have another day of business to wrap up!