Moscow

Soooo....it seems as though we are not very disciplined with this whole blogging business! Or we are having too much fun to sit down and write (yeah, let's go for that one!)
Next after St Petersburg was our trip to Moscow, which now seems so far away.
The sunshine, exquisite architecture and clean streets of St P were a stark contrast to the gloomy weather,
chaos and 'big-city' vibe of Moscow.
We will keep this one short (if we are ever gonna catch up with the blog)...so here are our top 3:

Things we loved about Moscow:

1. St Basil's Cathedral: predictable, I know but this Cathedral feels like the heart of Moscow (and is in fact the geometric center of the capital). To start off with it's in the Red Square, with the Kremlin Walls and Lenin's mausoleum right next to it. The queue to get in was surprisingly short, and the Cathedral consists of  9 separate chapels with beautifully painted walls and ornate ceilings . However, for me the outside made the biggest impression with it's swirling colourful domes. It reminds Sav of Disneyland!

2. The Tretyakov Gallery: We went to this gallery as Sav's grandfather had often told us a story about one of the paintings which made a lasting impression upon him. It is a painting by Repin called 'Ivan the Terrible and his Son Ivan'. Her grandfather used to say that legend has it that this painting of Ivan the Terrible right after he kills his son and heir also called Ivan (just to confuse matters) is so realistic, that one visitor to the gallery became distressed and put a knife right through the middle of the canvass. It really is a very compelling painting, and the despair in Ivan's eyes upon realising what he has done feels very powerful and authentic.

3. We also really loved a little cafe called 'Люди Как Люди' http://www.ludikakludi.com/ which I think means 'People as People'. It was really close to our hotel (more about that later) and was just about the only place in otherwise extortionately expensive Moscow where we could get reasonably-priced food and drinks. They also did really good coffee and tasty salads and cakes.They also had free wi-fi, which is pretty much available everywhere in Moscow.

Things we did not like about Moscow:

1. Our hotel 'Russian Dream'...by now most of you have probably heard the story about this hotel, but I think it's worth commemorating in the blog. So we arrive in Moscow and our taxi drops us off in front of this derelict building...we look for a sign for the hotel, and can't find this anywhere. Eventually, our driver asked some people and it turns out the 'hotel' was in the building on the second floor.  We dragged our bags up to be told by a teenage boy with bleached hair that the double room we had booked was 'broken' until tomorrow, and that they could offer us the 'twin room'. Words cannot describe the size of this 'room', so it's best that you just look at the picture. Suffice to say that Sav's shoulders could not fit in the space between the wall and the bunk beds and we had to put our backpacks on the top bunk, while we were on the bottom one. There was also no window or any kind of ventilation! Surprisingly we actually managed to get a few
hours sleep there. The next day we were moved to the best room, which was a more normal sized (although still dirty, with suspicious stains on the wall) room. To be fair, the hotel was very cheap for Moscow standards (£30 a night), so I guess you get what you pay for.

2. Which brings me on to the prices...I think Moscow is 1.5, if not twice as expensive as London. You cannot get away with less that £50-70 if you want to see anything. One day we walked into an average-looking restaurant to hide from the rain, and the cheapest item (a bowl of soup) was £45! Apparently, Moscow is also the city with most billionaires in the world...




3. The bureaucracy: this was probably our pet hate in Moscow and was perfectly exemplified by the procedure for getting tickets to the Kremlin Armory. So, we queued in a massive queue in front of the Kremlin for around 30 minutes and were keen to get tickets to the Armory and the Diamond Fund. Once we arrived to the front of the queue, we were told that limited numbers of tickets to the Armory are only sold 3/4 times a day, half an hour before the 'tour' of the Armory and that we need to come back in an hour and a half. We were also told that tickets to the Diamond Fund are sold in a separate building altogether! At the end, we just got a 'general' Kremlin ticket as the thought of coming back and queuing again with no guarantee of getting Armory tickets was a bit much. I guess if we'd done better research, or gone with a tour things might have been easier, but hindsight and all that :)


All in all, although we loved certain things about Moscow, we were very glad to get on the Trans-Mongolian train on our fourth day!