Well, thanks to the pharmaceutical industry, I slept almost 10 hours last night with only a couple of interruptions. Aaah, life is so much better when rested. Lance and I went to a little shop on the way to the Kremlin for breakfast, with a lot of pointing and nodding. It all worked out. He then set out for the Hop-on Hop-off bus (Michael’s favorite!) and I went back to the room to work on the blog. Can’t let it go too long or else it’s really an all-day project to catch up. More photos and video to come when I return home, but it’ll do for the moment.
We met up again at 2 for the Kremlin tour, and what an eclectic group we had! A quiet couple from Manchester, England, a bon vivant traveling for 2 years from Delhi and a radical extremist from Israel, pays and all. The tour lasted about and hour and a half, and we laughed because our guide, Elena (yes, again) said jokingly that someone from the KGB would be accompanying us, then laughed it off. And then, she had to go and get an approved guide to accompany us. Exactly on whom was the joke? Learned about the long and glorious history of the Kremlin as a palace, as the site for coronations, marriages, the center of government and now a military school. We saw the guards (like in Buckingham palace),
the church for burials (including Ivan and Michael, the first of the Romanov dynasty of rulers)
a 40-ton cannon (the largest in the world?) that was never actually fired,
and a 200-ton bell that was poured in a form in the ground, but then took 100+ years to figure out how to get it out (finally a Frenchman showed up who helped them. It seems they relied tremendously on the French and Italians for design and innovation).
Tour over, we head back to the Metropol to get our Eyewitness guide and go on our own tour of the underground metros, considered some of the most beautiful in the world. We traveled to a few stops, taking the time to admire bronze statues, beautiful mosaics, HUGE chandeliers (thankfully that all have cfl or fluorescents now) and porcelain figurines dressed in their local costumes doing folk dances.
The platform with mosaics in the ceiling rings:
a couple of the mosaics of every day life:
the station with 72 bronze statues:
and one of the statues:
We also managed to get lost, ask for help and be on our way again. All in the adventure!
My dogs are barking, but back to the hotel for a quick shower and change, and then out to dinner and to hear jazz. We ate at Ogeluk, which means “little coal” in Russian. Evidently it’s a well-known chef’s creation and the theme is that everything is cooked on wooden stoves imported from the US and made in the early 1900’s. Hip atmosphere and fun waitstaff. We certainly enjoyed ourselves and I didn’t hesitate a bit when the hostess asked me if I wanted a second basil-vodka cocktail!
Yummy grilled octopus and aubergine salad:
How was that lamb burger?
After dinner, we walked to where we thought the jazz club was, but had misplaced the more detailed map and never really found it. No problem, though. Just fun to be walking the streets, pass the Tchaikovsky theatre and head back to the hotel. First, though, a stop at the grocery store to pick up a couple things for breakfast and check out the prices for caviar. We found a young man who could speak English so we could ask about the different varieties, but in the end I bought nothing. Worried about whether what I was buying was good and whether Mr. Customs man would let me bring it in the country, I wimped out (and tried Face-timing my caviar pro, Stebbe-bebbe, but no answer). Back to pack up and ready to take the metro and train to the airport first thing in the morning. Off to Budapest!