Visiting Moscow Day 1
Today we arrived in Moscow on the Tolstoy overnight train from Helsinki, Finland. We got to Moscow at 9.15. After stopping by our hotel to leave the luggage, we headed to the Metro station close to us. What a tremendous surprise to see the Metro station. They look like museums, so ornate.
We headed in the direction of our first stop for today, which was a visit to Lenin’s Mausoleum. He has been there since 1924. We had to line up for over an hour, lots of people from all over the world want to see this site. Afterwards we visited St Basil’s Cathedral, which sits besides the Kremlin. This was also an experience, as there are a number of churches -10 churches – all joined together. Lots of religious art is found inside the churches, we could not work out where they have the services. There is not one big open church, where you go and sit, there are lot of little spaces. Beautiful architecture, which was built over many years.
Afterwards we visited the largest shopping centre in Moscow. This sits right opposite the Kremlin. It is called GUM. In the old Soviet days this store had only Russian items for sale. How times have changed. Today it is full of very expensive international brand name stores.
We had lunch at a cafeteria called Stolovaya number 57, which is a recreation of dining in post Stalinist Russia.
After lunch we spent more time around Red Square, – which is huge and full of people all day long – before visiting the State History Museum.
After more walking area the Kremlin area, we stopped at a nice restaurant a block from the Kremlin to have a pizza and drinks, before heading back to our hotel.
See some more photos from today’s journey here: https://adobe.ly/328itj4
A great first day in Russia.