Hello everyone and welcome to RMI's July 25th Mt. Elbrus trip! After some very long flights the team safely arrived yesterday, we briefly touched base about today's plan before folks retired to catch up on some much needed sleep. Today we had our official team meeting over breakfast at our hotel. It was hard to concentrate while enjoying plenty of fresh bread, cheeses, meats, juice and other delightful things. Once our bellies were full we stumbled out the door to explore the Kremlin and Red Square which is only a short distance away. A few folks visited Lenin's tomb and a few of us wandered around the area enjoying the site. We met our tour guide around 10:30 am and spent much of the day with her visiting St. Basil's Cathedral, the Kremlin, and the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. Our tour guide even took us on a brief tour of the amazing Moscow subway - it has a 194 different stops and most are elaborately decorated and incredibly clean! We did visit the famous Red Square but for unknown reasons it was closed and blocked off today. Afterwards we took a short break where most of us took cat naps to help adjust to the almost 12 hour time change and then headed back out for a quick dinner before calling it a night. Everyone is doing great! RMI Guide Casey Grom and Team