We nearly didn’t make it to Moscow – as the plane came into land the snow ploughs were still out on the runway, causing the pilot to abort at the last minute. As we climbed rapidly we were still close enough to see the shock on the faces of the plough drivers below. A couple of circles later and we were on solid, if rather icy ground and heading towards Moscow.
Our hotel turned out to be Complex Izmailovo, the old athlete’s village from the 1980 Olympics. Built in 1979 and renovated in 1998, these are huge 30-storey concrete edifices consisting of four buildings – Alfa, Beta, Vega and Gamma/Delta containing 7500 rooms and everything a group of athletes or finely-honed tourists could require. We were in Gamma/Delta which had 28 floors and 2000 basic but adequate rooms aligned along great corridors, each with a floor warden.
After freshening up we headed out onto the subway to see Red Square. The subway there is amazing – each station is individually designed by famous artists and contains some stunning paintings, sculptures or mosaics. It’s a little old and the lights a little dim, but it’s reliable and pretty easy to use.
We’d arrived at the tail end of winter, so we tentatively made our way across the ice covered square until we stood in the middle, surrounded by iconic scenes such as Saint Basils Cathedral, the Kremlin and the GUM department store.
After everyone had taken too many photos we headed into Lenin’s Mausoleum to see the embalmed body of Vladimir Lenin. Supposedly plasticised after his death in 1924 it looks in good condition, but he was a remarkably short chap.
Heading into Gum it was no longer the useful day-to-day store with housewives queuing for hours to get the last loaf of bread, but a selection of very high end shops. Most of the patrons looked very well off and fur coats still seemed to be acceptable for everyone. On reaching the centre of the store we were surprised to find a number of dancers performing, but most of the locals ignoring this as what must be a regular occurrence.
Unable to afford most of the goods on offer we headed up the street to Lubyanka Square, home to the headquarters of the FSB, formerly the KGB. The front of the building was pretty imposing but the scary part turned out to be a huge black door at the rear, where it was easy to imagine prisoners being dragged in with not much hope of seeing daylight again.
Exhausted we headed back to the hotel, but on discovering that the in-house food was pretty awful left to find a restaurant. A couple of false starts later we found a place in the style of a wooden hut which served unrecognisable but very tasty meat with potatoes and the excellent Baltika beer on draft. The journey back was interrupted by a visit to the local vodka shop – dozens of varieties to choose from but I was looking for something specific that had been recommended back home: Stolichnaya vodka infused with port. Very, very tasty.
The next day we went on a coach ride to the Sergiev Posad, a beautiful monastery 60km outside of Moscow. On the way we stopped at a hill alongside the Olympic ski jump and looked out over the Moscow skyline, with the imposing Universities taking centre place.
Travelling past Star City, the home of Russia’s space programme was possibly more exciting that Sergiev Posad itself and we soon tired of the blue and gold domes, instead finding a local tea shop run by a very friendly old lady.
The next day we got to see inside the Kremlin, which seemed to take a whole day but with very little memorable actually happening.
Early that evening we boarded the overnight train to St Petersburg. We were in sleeper carriages, with each room housing 4 people. As there were 9 of us I volunteered to go it alone and was directed by the train guard to the next available room. Wandering in I found myself faced with 3 young ladies in advanced stages of undress, and all doing vodka shots. Joining in things were going well until the guard suddenly reappeared and demanded that I swap with a girl in the next carriage, who it seems had been having quite the opposite experience. She’d been placed into a room with 3 soldiers already down to their underpants and wasn’t anywhere near as happy about it as I’d been with my roommates.
You are so lucky how on earth can you aford to travel every where when i was a kid i just hitch hiked everywhere longone are those days wcorona scare tactics gas stations and stores wont let u use there bathrooms let alone will foolish chicken littles pic up a rider these days even a curvy one unless they have something else in mind and they will drop you just as fast when u say no 🙅 lol
My dads name was steve thank you for blogging and sharing pics i miss him , it was lovely get lost in hour travels for a few hours !