Россуя - Москва (Russia - Moscow in Cyrillic)

We got to Russia by travelling through Paris, London and Moscow all in 36 hours. It's a hard life...

We met our tour guide Katya on the first day who was gorgeously Russian with a lovely long plait. That night we met with our group and found out all 15 of us were Aussies! It was a little weird not being home for so long and then having a buffer zone of Australia on tour.

The tour started the next day, with Katya taking us via the Moscow metro to the Red square - first stop: Lenin's Mausoleum. After waiting in line for half an hour we had a very quick and eerie 3 minute walk through the highly guarded mausoleum. Lenin looked like he was about to take a breath. Afterwards we toured around the Red Square (the word for red in Russian also means beautiful). We walked throught the GUM shopping center - previously only for Russian-made apparel, but now exclusive boutiques. St Basil's Cathedral at the end of the square was stunning as expected. We decided to look inside the Cathedral and were surprised at the several small chambers as opposed to a large worship hall (to conserve heat in the -20 deg C winters). We walked to an underground restaurant for lunch then past a un-namable building before walking to the Church of Our Saviour. The president happened to be inside where a service was being held, so we couldn't go in to the main part, but we donned scarves to attend the service in a subsiduary cathedral. Very ceremonial. We finished off the day having a tour of three of the best metro stations - complete with chandeliers, marble and mosaics.

In the Red Square

The second day was back to Red square for a tour of the Kremlin. Actually, Kremlin just means fort - every Russian city has a Kremlin... the Moscow one is just famous. Inside the Kremlin was different to what I expected. It was just a conglomeration of buildings, some old, some modern and some still used by today's parliament. We saw the biggest cannon that hasn't been fired and the biggest bell never rung as well as a slew of cannon's captured from Napoleon as spoils of war. People (tourists) were kept in line by guards using their whistles with gusto. We also saw the main church area that contained about four churches. One for coronation, one for everyday use and one for funerals. After the Kremlin , Mum and I split off from the group with a few other people and walked up to the main coffee area for lunch at Starbucks and a visit to Hard Rock Cafe. In the afternoon we walked back to the Alexandrian gardens around the Kremlin and were in time for the very precise, but short, changing of the guard.

The next day, Katya took some of our group to a park in front of the University overlooking the Moscow skyline. It was then back to the hotel and off to catch the train to Pskov.

Overlooking the Moscow skyline

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and Judy