May 18 – Moscow, Russia. First morning on the ship. Our room is on the starboard side just forward of the Niva Restaurant, the ship's main dining room. We're on the middle deck of staterooms. The lower deck has the front office, the library, some staterooms and a small shop, the middle deck has staterooms and the dining room. The upper deck has mostly staterooms and the sky deck has the Sky Lounge, the lecture hall & bar lounge area, and the open deck aft of that.
Right across the Moscow River from us is a small outdoor museum. It has a Soviet diesel submarine and the Soviet attempt to develop a jet powered passenger seaplane. I saw some video on that aircraft some time ago. Too much spray and other problems scrubbed the project.
We are taking an included ship's tour this AM. Most of the people on the ship arrived yesterday afternoon or evening so they haven't seen anything of Moscow. It will be somewhat of a repeat for us but I'm finding Moscow fascinating so we decided to go anyway.
Our guide, Sergay (sp?), is about my age or maybe a little older and has a great Russian voice and accent. He has an almost British, that is to say dry and a little sarcastic, that I've always loved. It's always nice to have a really good guide. As we drove into Moscow we passed the Belaruskaya Train Station where we arrived in Moscow. It was from this station that Russian soldiers left for the so called Eastern Front to fight the Germans in WWII.
The short city tour was interesting. We drove by the Kremlin and got a good view of the wall and Cathedral Square. We stopped at an overlook, Sparrow Hill, for a view over the city. The haze was light but didn't allow for great distance pictures. A little church was located at one end of the viewing belvedere so I went in for a look. As usual it was very ornate. It was dedicated to a male saint but I'm not sure who. The first picture to the right of the center doors of the iconostasis is almost always the patron of the church. He was show in the garb of a high ranking Orthodox priest so it's possible I've never heard of him. We drove along the Moscow River past a very elaborate pedestrian bridge of modern design. Its walkway was entirely enclosed by a curving grid work and looked a lot like a greenhouse.
To get to Red Square we were dropped off at a suburban Metro station, xxxx, that allowed for easy, uncrowded access to the subway, critical when trying to move a large group of novice riders onto the cars. We are on the same line as out hotel but one stop further out of town. So we will ride 4 stops to Red Square. This station had a very nice mural at the end of the platform showing a Russian general and his staff with a map signifying that they were responsible for a major victory against Napoleon if I got the symbolism right. They were dressed in 17-18 Century uniforms.
We walked out the opposite end of the station at the Revolutionary Plaza than Diana and I usually used. This brought us up on the square proper. Across way the was the home of the Bolshoi Ballet. We've seen them perform in Los Angeles. To say they are excellent would understate their abilities. We walked into Red Square down the same street as the other entrance but from along the same street, no turn required.
Since we had pretty much done the square we decided to head into the GUM Department Store building. I say building because it is now a very high end mall, not the department store of the Communist era. Entrance is no longer restricted to select party members, anyone may enter. For those of you in SoCal it's a lot like South Coast Plaza in the type of stores, mostly designer shops and famous brand names. For the Texans it would be the Galleria in Dallas. It has 3 floors and two main halls that are connected every 30 yards or so by cross walks and hallways each with a set of stairs to change floors. Each long hallway is open down the center, that's where the cross walks come in, shortcuts to the other side. Over the two main halls there's a huge, curved skylight the illuminates the whole space very well. There are escalators up but not down. Diana and I decided to walk up to beat the crowd to the restrooms on the 3rd floor. It worked very well. When she went in, no line. By the time she came out, long line.
We took the long way around the building changing floors occasionally to try to see as much as we could. Except for the alphabet, we could have been at any chic mall in the USA.
We left Red Square through the double Resurrection Gate and boarded our bus on the main street that runs by the Kremlin. It was back to the ship for some time to get the room organized efficiently and get some rest.
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