Russia 2007

August 23 - Moscow

We had a pretty decent buffet breakfast this morning. I ended up with crepes along with fresh grapefruit and oranges, coffee, bacon and toast. We sat with one couple from North Carolina and another from Lakewood. Our conversation was good.

St Basil's Cathedral

Lenin's Tomb

Vantage splits up the tour into groups. We are the yellow group. Each group takes the same bus on day tours, uses the same tour guide, eats together and walks around together. Our local Moscow tour guide is Svetlana. Our yellow tour manager is Marina. This morning, we found our bus and left the pier at 8:30 bound for Red Square. Svetlana gave us a running narration of all of the places we passed. I felt like I was watching a tennis match with one sight on the left, the next one on the right, and so on. Traffic was pretty bad, but it got better closer to the city center. As I remember from the Russian crime novels that I have read, the major roads in Moscow had the center lanes reserved for "important" people so that they could get to places faster. We didn't see any of that.

We got off of the bus at Red Square. It was like walking into a fairy land. St Basil's Cathedral was on the left, the Kremlin was straight ahead, Lenin's Tomb was a little to the right and Gum's department store was behind us. What a sight! We took a bunch of pictures and then went to watch the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier where the guards actually goose-stepped as they marched to and from the guard station. After that we went into Gum, primarily to find the WC. I stopped at a little café for a cinnamon bun and fruit drink. This is where I met my first surly Russian sales person. All I had to pay with was a 1000 ruble note - about $25. She was really put out to go to the back room to get change and give me a very dirty look. I expected this, though, so it didn't bother me.

Novodevichy Monastery

Sun Bathers at Gorky Park

It was back on the bus to see Novodevichy Monastery. The monastery was known to have sheltered many ladies from the Russian royal families and boyar clans, who had been forced to take the veil.

We took a river cruise for lunch. We passed many of the sights hat we saw from the bus. This time we could take much better pictures. The weather was hot so we saw lots of people sunning themselves and swimming at Gorky Park.

Our last stop before heading back to the boat was Sparrow Hill, the highest point in Moscow. We had a panoramic view of the city and its smog. This is a popular spot for bridal parties to get their pictures taken. Here we saw the first of many wedding photo ops during this weekend.

When we got back to the boat, Ann and I walked over to the local super market and bought real Russian vodka, Russian beer, Russian Lays potato chips, Russian orange juice and Russian chocolate. We sampled the beer and chips but saved the rest until later.

Dinner was way early. We had borsht and either pork or trout. Then we were off for the Moscow Circus. Our guide, Marina, made sure that we knew that we were going to the old circus, not the new one. Apparently there is a difference. Even though it is the old circus, it is in a recently refurbished building. When we entered, some of the animals were on display in the lobby for picture taking. We saw a camel, a chimpanzee, dogs, a pony, a leopard, a jaguar and a cayman. The seating was all around the small arena. There was a circus band at the top. We saw acrobats, a magician, a dog act, a couple of bear acts and a lion-tamer act. The acts were very professional. The performers had won prizes at various competitions. It was fun and very worthwhile.

The map of our route is below. To see it in Google Earth, follow this link.