Cecilia And Alisdair, friends of long standing, left Moscow this morning by overnight train bound for St Petersburg to begin the second half of their whistle-stop holiday in Russia. I have now replaced my tourist guide's hat with the usual, well-worn, teacher's one.
Their holiday was arranged as part of a package but while they were in Moscow they stepped back from the confines of their organised group and allowed me to be their guide for their all too brief time in Moscow.
On day one we saw Red Square and the changing of the guard at the eternal flame, toured GUM and had coffee and cake in Stolovaya 57, reflected on the inhumanity of man at the State Gulag museum, marvelled at the sculptures outside the Museum of Modern Art, paid the foreigners' inflated prices at the Tretyakov galley and had real Russian ice-cream in Gorkiy Park!
All in one day! Their feet didn't touch the ground.
They didn't get inside the Kremlin itself because the queue was so long. Next time?
On day two we visited the Central Armed Forces museum, near Dostoyevskaya metro station and then the 1939-45 Great Patriotic War museum before embarking on a river boat at Kievskiy Vokzal for a leisurely meander along the river Moskva. In the Central Army museum we two veterans bought Soviet Army ration packs as a souvenir and to remind ourselves of our own experiences with British Field rations. In the Patriotic War museum after viewing many of the exhibits and being held spell-bound by the excellent 3D-like dioramas they were treated to a display of ballroom dancing. A very nice coincidence as they are great dancers themselves.
At the end of the visit, as they were returning by monorail to their hotel, a young man presented Cecilia with three flowers. As she couldn't really take them she kindly gave them to me. Although it is considered slightly (?) effeminate for a man to carry flowers in UK it is perfectly acceptable to do so here so I had no qualms about carrying them through the metro to put them in a makeshift vase in my apartment.
Here are a few photos of the things we saw during their visit and a video clip of Gorkiy Park (the song, not the film based on the excellent book by Martin Cruz Smith). I think we've seen/heard this before but it's my blog so I get to choose!
And now for an early night!
Their holiday was arranged as part of a package but while they were in Moscow they stepped back from the confines of their organised group and allowed me to be their guide for their all too brief time in Moscow.
On day one we saw Red Square and the changing of the guard at the eternal flame, toured GUM and had coffee and cake in Stolovaya 57, reflected on the inhumanity of man at the State Gulag museum, marvelled at the sculptures outside the Museum of Modern Art, paid the foreigners' inflated prices at the Tretyakov galley and had real Russian ice-cream in Gorkiy Park!
All in one day! Their feet didn't touch the ground.
They didn't get inside the Kremlin itself because the queue was so long. Next time?
On day two we visited the Central Armed Forces museum, near Dostoyevskaya metro station and then the 1939-45 Great Patriotic War museum before embarking on a river boat at Kievskiy Vokzal for a leisurely meander along the river Moskva. In the Central Army museum we two veterans bought Soviet Army ration packs as a souvenir and to remind ourselves of our own experiences with British Field rations. In the Patriotic War museum after viewing many of the exhibits and being held spell-bound by the excellent 3D-like dioramas they were treated to a display of ballroom dancing. A very nice coincidence as they are great dancers themselves.
At the end of the visit, as they were returning by monorail to their hotel, a young man presented Cecilia with three flowers. As she couldn't really take them she kindly gave them to me. Although it is considered slightly (?) effeminate for a man to carry flowers in UK it is perfectly acceptable to do so here so I had no qualms about carrying them through the metro to put them in a makeshift vase in my apartment.
Here are a few photos of the things we saw during their visit and a video clip of Gorkiy Park (the song, not the film based on the excellent book by Martin Cruz Smith). I think we've seen/heard this before but it's my blog so I get to choose!
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And now for an early night!
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