I slept terribly last night. Was even lighter than the other nights in St Petersburg and I just couldn't sleep. Then we woke up at 5.30am to go and get our train - my eyes felt disgusting. But I soon jumped out of bed excited because I remembered we were leaving for Moscow today!!!
We walked to the station. Still quite a few people around, mostly drunk guys still out from Saturday night!! Boarded our 7am train which was a high speed one. Was lovely and clean, but very hot inside. Made us all feel pretty disgusting.
We arrived at Moscow about 11am. Now as I said yesterday I had heard horror stories about rude people, no English being spoken and no English signage. So I prepared myself for the worst. But may I say we have been really pleasantly surprised! First of all we rang our apartment manager. He is American mind you but when I told him we were getting the metro from the main station he laughed and said "good luck!". He hasn't met me and my photographic memory before though! I had looked at the maps I got from my Lonely Planet guide on the train for a little bit. When he was telling me which train to get and where to walk to meet him afterwards I fully understood where he was talking about. Initially had told mum and she had handed me the phone horrified saying "Maybe you'd better speak to my daughter, she's good with directions!". No English at the train station, but walked up to the ticket window and held up three fingers. All good. Walked to the platform and figured out what the station we wanted was in Russian. All good! We have started to name the strange Cyrillic characters we don't know. My personal favourites are 'pi' and 'the space invader'. Hahaha. We got the train all good and then walked to near where our apartment was. We had to wait about 15 minutes for Rick to come and meet us, but this was a good chance to cool down as it was 27 degrees today and we got very hot walking around!
We met Rick. Wow he can talk!! And that says a lot coming frame me! I thought we would never get to see any of Moscow. He was really friendly though which was great. After being shown around the apartment which is in a fantastic location right near Red Square, we changed into some warm weather clothes (I haven't worn shorts since Greece - how exciting!) and set off.
Firstly we walked up the main road near our apartment called Tvulskaya. Rick had told us of a supermarket that during soviet times was used by the rich and higher ups. We had a look. It was like a palace! Decked out with chandeliers, paintings etc. Never seen anything like it before and doubt I ever will again!! After this we went to Cafe Pushkin, which was also lavishly decorated. We lashed out and spoiled ourselves, each having a beautiful cake and drink. They were absolutely delicious!
We took advantage of the good weather and next walked to Red Square. This is the main square of Moscow and has a lot of interesting history. There will be much more on that tmro, I promise! We are doing af free walking tour and a tour of the Kremlin so I'll have lots more info tmro. For now I'll just say we enjoyed the lovely buildings in the square including the Kremlin, Kazan Cathedral, Lenin's tomb, GUM department store and of course St Basil's Cathedral. The square was buzzing and full of people and we took some great photos. Then we went into St Basil's. The interior was quite medieval. The cathedral was built in the 1500s commissioned by emperor Ivan the Terrible! We saw lots of little rooms filled with armour, paintings and other things. I really enjoyed the medieval wall paintings thought with flowers and lots of colour. And the good news - my camera behaved itself a bit better today and the photos turned out a little better :)
For the remainder of the day we walked A LOT. We walked South, down past the Kremlin and crossed the river. Mum was wearing my Collingwood hat and we ran into a fellow Aussie who barracked for Brisbane! We headed to the Art Museum Sculpture Park. Here lots of sculptures from the soviet era are located. They were taken down in 1991. Mum and I had been to a similar sculpture park in Budapest, Hungary in January 2011. Once again it was interesting to see. We then continued on to Gorky Park. Because it was such a beautiful day and a Sunday, the locals were all out sun baking, swimming in the fountains, roller blading and lazing about. It was a great atmosphere.
Then we caught the train back to the apartment (I'm so proud of us, didn't even get lost!) and had a rest. Then we picked up our ballet tickets for Tuesday - so excited! Went for dinner in the street near our apartment which has a fantastic atmosphere. There are buskers and it's great for people watching. We had Italian as I was craving it and we've been eating the local food for ages now. I really loved my pizza!!!
This city is much bigger than St Petersburg. Rick was telling us mostly all of the business in Russia is done here. He said now is the quiet time as all the Russians are on summer holidays. St Petersburg is touristy so it's always high season all summer, but Moscow dies down a little during the business holidays. I had such negative perceptions in my head that I've been pleasantly surprised! Most people at the places we went spoke at least enough English to help us out with what we asked. All the staff at lunch and dinner spoke great English and smiled at us. No one has smashed into me or been rude at all! I'm starting to think that maybe they're happier due to it being the low season. That's the only explanation I can think of!!! But I think it's like Paris. Everyone told me how rude and horrible everyone there is, and I never had a problem! I hope this keeps up.
Lots more walking tmro and 25 and completely sunny - YAY sunshine!!!!! Keep it up Mother Nature.
Love to all
Claire
Xoxox
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