In Moscow, the sites visit you!

We're back! Now it's time to try and remember everything; here goes nothing!

We went to the train station at midnight. The metro system closes here at 12:00, so we had to set out a little early. On the way, we saw plenty of party people, haha. There was even a bus labeled "Party Bus," with music blaring out of it. Don't know what they were celebrating, but it looked fun!

Got to the train station, and it looked pretty much like a train station. This is the longest I've ever ridden on a train and the only time on a train with sleeper cars. It was really cool! The beds folded down from the walls, and the seatbacks folded down on the benches for the lower beds. 4 people to each car. I felt like Harry Potter!

My compartment was me, Julie, Xinyue, and Anatoli. We stayed up until about 2 am playing my new favorite card game, Fool. Anatoli has been playing since he was a little boy, because apparently Fool is to Russia as Euchre is to Indiana. He was really good, needless to say, and he didn't lose one game that night. I did! Haha.

Before we went to bed, the attendant lady came around and took our orders for breakfast (included in the price!). I ordered an omelet and sausage. It was funny, because the attendant didn't speak any English, so Anatoli was worried that the boys' car hadn't been able to order any food. The attendant told him in Russian that they had ordered pancakes. We were all really amazed that they had managed to order food in Russian! Anatoli went to see how they had done it, and they told him that the attendant had come in, that they had told her that they didn't speak Russian, so she just smiled and left! So I guess "I don't speak Russian" means "Pancakes, please!" hahaha good thing they all wanted pancakes anyway. :)

So we went to bed and I read for awhile and slept pretty well! We arrived in Moscow at 9:40ish, disembarked, and set out onto the streets! It was super hot. At 10:00am, it was 75. We went to find a Metro Station. The map of this metro system was like a spiderweb compared to St. Petersburg. (Fun fact: Moscow's official population is 11,000,000 and change--3 million more than NYC--but the actual population is much larger, because a lot of migrants from other countries and other areas in Russia live in Moscow, but aren't registered residents). We took the metro to the Kremlin stop and got off.

SO, this whole trip, I've been confused as to what the "Kremlin" is! I thought the style of the tops of the cathedrals (like Church on Spilt Blood), but then I found out it is sort of a center of government. So I was curious to find out. When we arrived, it was a huge wall (turns out that's what "kremlin" literally means) and there was a huge area inside containing 4 cathedrals and a bunch of buildings! So we went to the ticket office, and (prepare yourself) the Kremlin was CLOSED. CLOSED! Anatoli was furious. He said that Sunday is the main day for tourists, and that the Kremlin is closed every Thursday so it can stay open on weekends. The reason they gave us was that the President's residence was closed that day, and since the Kremlin is part of his residence, it closed too. Isn't that lame?! It seems that this kind of thing happens a lot, though, because we saw another poor guy in line who said he had tried to go yesterday, but it was closed, and open only half a day the day before that.

So that took a lot of wind out of our sails, especially since that was the main site to see in Moscow. However, the Armory Museum portion of the Kremlin WAS open! Hurrah! But only 89 tickets are available at specific times for that, so we stood in line and rushed in. We made it! While we were waiting in line, we met a husband and wife from the Phillipines who were visiting and only spoke English, so they were asking Anatoli how to use the metro. Also, we met a pair of sisters from America. One lives in Florida and the other in Grand Rapids, Michigan! She knew exactly where Plymouth was because she used to live in South Bend!!! Also, her coworkers are huge Purdue fans, so she was really excited to go back home and tell him that she met us! It was crazy!!

Okay, so it may sound like a terrible start, but the Armory is actually the main museum inside the Kremlin. It houses all the gifts and regalia of Russian Leaders since before even the time of Peter the Great. We saw the Faberge eggs, crazy-ornate things of every nature, and some really amazing gold, silver, and jewel work. It was really awesome, and I only took a couple pictures, because I had to dodge the docents (shhh).

We wandered through that for a couple hours with our mouths hanging open (or was that just me?) and then we tried to sweet talk our way on to the rest of the Kremlin grounds. The guard was having none of that, though, so we went back outside the big walls.

Then, we went to a park area pretty close and decided to eat some lunch. It was pricey! We ate at Sbarro Pizza, and mine was ~600 Rubles, or 20 bucks! It was delicious though. Everyone ate a ton because they had spent so much to get it, and once we were done, we were all kind of hazy. Note: A Michael Jackson concert from the 90's was playing on several big screens in the restaurant!

Then we went to watch a changing of the guard at the Soviet Tomb of The Unknown Soldier. At this point, it was nearing 85. Luckily, there were a lot of tourists in Moscow, so I didn't feel as dorky in my running shorts and t-shirt. There is NO way I could have dressed the way the Russian women dress that day. The tomb was pretty cool, and we waited for about 20 minutes for the guard to change. Their marching style looked extremely taxing, especially on this hot day. It was really similar to the changing of the guard at the tomb in Arlington National Cemetery, so it was really cool to see the same ceremony in two very different settings.

After that, we went to Red Square. Guess what! It was CLOSED. Well, sort of anyway. They had it blocked off with fences, because there's big festivities in a few weeks that they need to get it all spiffy for. We could see all of it, but we couldn't stroll around it, which was a bummer. Oh well! I was starting to get the feeling that tourists from America didn't matter very much to the sites of Moscow. That's probably how it should be.

So, we walked through a mall (which turned out to be a historical mall built during the 19th century! Anatoli said during Soviet times, everyone would come to that mall to get anything of quality, which was hard stuff to find). On the other side was St. Basil's Cathedral! It was gorgeous! It was rather smaller than I pictured in my head, but it was still worth every mile of train ride! We went inside, but NO pictures were allowed (and I actually heeded the rules this time). This cathedral is 450 years old; it deserves some respect!

Fun (maybe that's a bad word to use) Legend: Ivan the Terrible is the one who commissioned the cathedral in 1555. After the architects finished the plans, Ivan IV had their eyes taken out so they'd never be able to create something that looks the same. They don't call him "The Terrible" for nothin'!

It was strange inside (there are pictures on the internet if you search for them). There was no cavernous sanctuary like all the other cathedrals we've been in. It had a lot of small rooms and winding passage ways. It was really cool, and it'd be an AWESOME place to play sardines if we wouldn't be trampling over 450 year old floors. The walls were painted rather than mosaic, but they were beautiful anyway.

After we roamed the church, we left to walk to the current seat of Russian Orthodoxy, a cathedral (surprise!). It was really pretty, white with gold domes. One the way there, we noticed a TON of bikes on one of the roads by the river. We think they might have a program where they shut down the streets once a month or so and let people bike there. There were all manner of people from super-intense spandexy guys to little girls with handle bar tassels. It was cool!

We also saw a gargantuan monument to Peter I on the river. "What? I thought Peter I founded St. Petersburg! Why is it in Moscow?" Well, I'm glad you asked. :)

Apparently this monument-maker guy (Tsereteli) was really "in" with the Russian government (still is) and had done several projects around Moscow. He decided to make a "beautiful" monument to send to America for the 500th anniversary of Columbus' discovery in 1992. So, he built this GIANT (500 feet!)
statue of Columbus standing on a comparatively tiny boat with GIANT sails and sent it to the U.S. We basically said, "Oh, that's so nice.... thanks, Russia..." and then didn't put the statue up anywhere. Who knows where it is! So, this Tsereteli guy was really mad! He made an extremely similar statue of Peter I standing on a tiny ship to commemorate 300 years of Russian Navy. He then presented it to St. Petersburg to display. They said, "Uhhh, thanks but no thanks. We have no where to put it!" So he ended up putting it in Moscow because he had such connections with the government that they didn't care what he did. Anatoli said that Moscuvites abhor the ugly statue and want it to be gone forever. It was pretty funny lookin' and so BIG!

See? No monument needs to be that big.

So, we get to the Cathedral. It's really pretty, but not as impressive because it was finished in the 1990's. We try to go in, but you're not allowed to wear shorts! I guess we should have seen that coming, but still it was kind of lame. So, the panted ones of our group went inside and told us what it was like. Apparently, it was "pretty".

After that, we walked on a pedestrian bridge near the cathedral and chilled for a while. It was a really pretty view.

Then, we meandered back to our train station, stopped at a shopping mall for dinner, sat and waited. We were only like 30 minutes early to our train, and the waiting room had beautiful window decals that looked like stained glass. It was like a sauna in there though, so we were glad when our train got ready for boarding. Same compartment configuration as the night before, and we played Fool again. This time, Anatoli was Fool once! It was a big occasion. Then we settled in for a 6 hour nap.

We arrived back in St. Petersburg at 5:00am. We had to wait 20 minutes for the metro station to open, but it was cool to see Nevsky Prospekt, one of the busiest streets in town, dead quiet. We made it back to the hostel and I immediately took a shower and then went to bed for 4 hours.

To Be Continued... :)