Saturday, the 17th was my birthday and our first full day here. We got up early and headed to the city center to see the Red Square, the Kremlin, and Lenin's Mausoleum. We could have taken the metro, but decided to walk the 20 minutes there to get a better sense of the city. We got turned around only a few times, and made it there with very little stress. Once we got to the square and got our delight under control, we were directed by a policeman toward the line for the mausoleum. It stretched just about he length of the square, but I've read that it moves pretty quickly, and besides, it's Lenin, so we were undaunted and joined the line. It took about a half hour to get up to the front, where we checked our bags and followed a path of former soviets' graves. With only a couple exceptions they were marked only in Cyrillic, but I recognized a few familiar names. Eventually the path led into the tomb itself, which was very dark and housed somber armed guards at every corner. There wasn't much time to stop when we reached Lenin, to keep the line moving, but it was very cool- absolutely worth the wait. Back out in the sunlight, we picked up our bags and headed to St. Basil's Cathedral at the other end of the square. I wasn't sure tickets were worth the 300 rubles, but Ashley convinced me, and I am so glad she did. I thought I got cathedral-ed out back in 11th grade when I was living in Switzerland and never fully recovered, but this was like nothing I had ever seen. The famous colorful dome roofs are some indication of what the inside looks like. The walls are painted floor to ceiling with colorful patterns and designs, and all the chapels are filled with frescoes and elaborate chandeliers and decorations. Can't wait to get some pictures up, but not sure I'll have a chance to get them off my camera until October. I have to remember to take a couple with my phone so I have something to share. Emerging from the maze of St. Basil's, we left the square for the Kremlin. It took us a while to figure out how and where to buy tickets, but once we were heading in the right direction, the line wasn't hard to miss. We waited a long time for those tickets- upwards of an hour in unexpectedly hot sun. When we finally got to the ticket booths, no one seemed to be following any kind of order anyway, and we lost a lot of time before I decided to be as aggressive as the Russians around me and pushed my way to the front, where I paid for two tickets and then got out of there as fast as I could. We checked our bags and cameras at the front like we were instructed to, but once inside found that everyone else had their cameras with them and were using them freely. I am a little disappointed that I won't have any pictures inside the kremlin walls, but it was so beautiful I'm sure I wouldn't have done it justice anyway. All the roofs of all the cathedrals are domed like St. Basil's, but gold instead of colorful and patterned so everywhere you look you are surrounded by beautiful gold and white churches. Five or six of the cathedrals inside the kremlin function as museums, so we wandered through them looking at the frescoes that cover every inch of wall and ceiling in each of them. Eventually, after attempting to sneak onto an English tour we passed (unsuccessful) and wandering around the grounds for a while, we decided to head back to the hostel to regroup and nap a bit (we were both still pretty jet lagged so hadn't slept much the night before).
After our nap, we were discussing potential birthday celebrations when a guy staying across the hall came over and introduced himself, saying that he was traveling alone and basically looking for company. We invited him out and left around 9, thinking we'd find a bar or restaurant and just have a quick drink... Our naps hadn't really rejuvenated us. We wandered for a while as it was still light and pretty warm out, then found a restaurant. The seats were all couches and armchairs with comfy pillows and curtains around the booths. We had a little vodka (it is Russia, after all, and it was my birthday) and stayed until around midnight, then Matt suggested that we check out a karaoke bar that is across the street from the hostel. Unfortunately, we underestimated how long we had been walking earlier and thought we had gotten lost (when really if we had just continued a few more blocks we would have made it home easily) so got a little turned around. Somehow we made it all the way to the city center. We decided to just take the metro back, but were told it was not possible to get home from where we were. That was just not true, but we believed the Russian who told us that, and decided we'd walk back. We got a little further down and realized we'd been pointed the wrong way by the people we'd met on the street. Luckily, we were able to get on the metro from there and made it back without further ado. We spent a while chatting with the girl working at the desk, who was working her first night shift and was (I hope) happy to have some company, and she even had a pizza delivered to the hostel for us. Yes, you can have pizza delivered to your hostel in Moscow.
The next day (yesterday) on even less sleep because we went to bed late but more because a new roommate snores louder than anyone I have ever heard (literally the room vibrates every time she breathes), Ashley and I headed to Kitai Gorod, an old Moscow neighborhood close to the city center where we saw two small museums- one, the chambers of the old Romanov palace, and the other the original British embassy that is 500 years old, with a lot of information on 16th century trade relations between Britain and Russia. They were both very interesting and cool buildings to look at, at the very least. On our way out of the second museum, we were literally attacked by pigeons. A whole flock of them was just sitting in the field and all of a sudden they all flew at us. There was a split second when I knew what was happening and had time to cover my head and cower behind Ashley. Otherwise, who knows what might have happened. Then we headed up to the northeast of the city, where there is a cosmonaut museum. After getting briefly stuck in the middle of a highway because there was a crosswalk to the median but not from it, we walked over to the museum, which was pretty cool, although most of the signs were only in Russian. From what I deduced, though, it really focuses on the politics of space travel, and not the science of the US air and space museums which I have never pretended to enjoy. Among my favorite parts of the museum: a tiny soviet flag that apparently Nixon presented to the USSR after sending it to the moon on Apollo 11 (I didn't know he did that, but I think it's great); the first two dogs the USSR sent to space, taxidermied and preserved in glass cases, posing next to a model of a space shuttle; and the English signs pointing you to the next exhibit, urging you to "inspect further". As we left the museum, we followed our ears to find a group of (potentially) Mongolian street performers dancing and singing. I thought it was pretty cool, but I was also exhausted and didn't think my legs would stand up for much longer, so after they finished their first song we hopped on a monorail that would take us to the right metro line and went home. I napped while Ashley got some bank issues settled (apparently Bank of America hates the ATM in the hostel and doesn't recognize the transaction) and then we decided to check out Arbatskaya, a street in the west of the city where, from what I can tell, Russian hipsters go to watch street performers and painters, drink beer, casually carry monkeys dressed as children on their shoulders, and eat Cinnabon and Dunkin Donuts. We wandered there for a while, until it seemed like all the performers were heading home, and then we did the same. Today's our last full day here; we hop on a train to St. Petersburg tomorrow night!
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