(Written on August 28)
Monday, before our bus ride to Moscow, we had 1.5 hours to explore Vladimir. I walked around with Stuart, Shelley, Kristy and Steph (I am now abbreviating them as SSKS). We didn't go inside any buildings but saw the church, walked to the golden gates, etc. We were told the bus to Moscow would be four hours and to my dismay, when we boarded the bus, there were no seats towards the front, and those in the back were mostly next to locals. Fortunately, the bus only took three hours and the guy sitting next to me didn't smell too much of smoke.
Had to take the metro to our apartments in Moscow. Bruce, Anna and I were supposed to be in the other apartment, but it turned out there were no single rooms there, so we ended up in the main one. I shared a room with Steph and Kristy. Moscow was by far our worst accommodation of the trip. We didn't even have an hour before we needed to leave for dinner I was able to get tickets to the Nutcracker (to join S, S, K and S) so I had to stuff my dinner down quickly. Stuart generously bought me a glass of champagne which I had to down quickly before the show started. The ballet was enjoyable but I have seen the Nutcracker numerous times and find the differences in interpretation interesting.
(Notes)
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
- Apartment is the worst we've stayed at yet; unappealing breakfast
- Decided not to go to the Mausoleum. Walked around the Red Square and saw St Basil's Cathedral, and found a wireless connection on the street outside GUM to call mom
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| St Basil's Cathedral |
- Raining on and off all day
- Kremlin tour, inside Annunciation Cathedral, Armoury - less than an hour rush highlights tour, amazing, so many items, overwhelming amount of precious stones
- Finished at 1:30pm, hungry for lunch at GUM, tasted the caramel GUM ice cream for dessert
- Gulag museum with Anna, SSKS
- Inside St. Basil's Cathedral - like a maze, lots of little cathedrals in one structure
- Tea on own at Transit cafe - got a bit lost in the sketchy building first
- Met group at 7pm on a random corner to go to Art Junk for dinner - started pouring rain just after we arrived, food took forever, sat for ages wrapped in red blankets
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
- Quick stop at Hotel Beijing to call Shell
- Metro to State Tretyakov Gallery (got a bit lost coming out of the metro and went into a random building, people not very helpful)
- Walk along the river to sculpture garden
- Walk past Cathedral of Christ the Savior, and out of my way to the Red Square only to find out that Steph is not going to Stalin's bunker and doesn't need to hang out with me
- Back along the same road (this time with Denise and Rod) to the Pushkin Fine Arts Gallery for Impressionist art; purchase an audio guide and spend almost 2.5 hours in the museum (waste too much time on Gauguin before realizing the third floor features Van Gogh, Picasso, Matisse, etc)
- Walk back to apartment along two main roads before stopping in the famous supermarket, eat a small dinner and pick up bags
- Hotel Beijing for one hour of internet
- Meet group at metro stop, 9:15pm, to go to train station, arrive extremely early, read The Madonnas of Leningrad
- Board train at 10:40pm, leave at 11pm, after some reading try to sleep - not as good as other train rides since I didn't take an Ambien
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