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Well, I’m kind of at a loss; sitting in a hotel which was frequented by Rasputin and Lenin, a bare 200 metres from Red Square and a place which now prides itself as serving meals fit for a Tsar! Watching Porsche and Ferrari sport cars race down the street knowing that they can pay off the police with several thousand Roubles. Or even walking the streets around the GUM Store and seeing the likes of Bulgari and Rolex one wanders about the revolution of communism.
Being served a latte whilst eating blinis (Russian pancakes) and admiring the opulence of a marble fountain and harpist is kind of ... civilised.
We met our guide and walked straight to Red Square; a matter of 5 minutes. It is a place of grandeur, with the Kremlin on one side, the GUM on the other and St Basil’s at one end. It was also fairly empty, and you got a good idea of the expanse and power of the place. We saw Putin’s office over in the Kremlin, and waved, but he had the curtains closed and didn’t see us. Either that or he was off somewhere bare chested and riding a horse or wrestling a tiger, or both. After soaking in the atmosphere, and, I have to say, the clean air, we headed for GUM. On a side note, it is interesting to see that the amount of pollution that we are encountering here is so much less than Beijing. Granted, they do have a few extra million people over there, but the air quality in Moscow is great. GUM is the old government store, which was built pre-Soviet times and then converted to meet the Soviet mentality and has now changed again. The glitz and glamour of the place sparkles, and it is the kind of place you’d expect to not see price tags; if you have to ask... However, and here’s the thing about Russia; in the very centre is an ice cream shop, and when I say ice cream, I do mean frozen cream, not a poor rendition that we have in Oz. To get a waffle cone here costs you 100 Roubles (about $2AU). 5 metres from here is a Hermes shop and I imagine it would cost more to step over the threshold.
From here we entered the supermarket contained in GUM and the smell of freshly baked bread permeates your senses. There is a wall dedicated to vodka, from Beluga (their best national brand) costing about $28AU to gift bottles inside a replica Faberge egg costing several thousand. They are also very proud of their products and have various tasting areas around the store. Trying to explain why we couldn’t take honey and other goods back into Australia made for an interesting conversation.
We had a fairly quick walk to just be able to see the changing of the guard outside if the Kremlin and then entered the Metro.
The Moscow Metro; how does one fully describe it. I had seen photos and read the book “Metro 2033” and played the computer game, so I had an idea. Yeah, an idea. Not reality. To put this place into perspective; every day over 8 million people use the metro (bigger than the population of Belgium) and there are miles of track down there, from about 25 metres down to over 80. It is decorative in every station, and although some seem to have had a higher priority than others, if is all tastefully done. There is no smoking in the metro, nor are you allowed to eat or drink. With that, there is no rubbish. At not one of the stations did we see anything lying on the ground. And how much it cost to use it? 55 Roubles for one trip. Not done by distance, one trip. You can change lines a number of times as we did and as you never leave the metro, you never pay again. The artwork down there is amazing. There are statues in several of the stations, frescoes, mosaics, paintings. Even the tiling in the floor.
After seeing about 7 different stations we ended at the Russian Cosmonauts Museum as Todd in particular wanted to see it. A fairly comprehensive museum, dedicated to the greatness of Russia in conquering space. Now, while I fully agree that the first satellite, dog, man and space walk are certainly all Russian, there was little here about anything else; also, about 90% of the descriptions were only in Russian. It would have been extremely useful to have had more in English, if only to see the tone of the description. On hindsight of course, how much do we cater for other languages in our country? Or anyone else’s accomplishments?
From here we made our way back to the hotel by the metro, by ourselves, had a quick bite to eat and then relaxed for a little while as we had booked dinner at Savva, Moscow’s number 1 restaurant (at least, according to TripAdviser). Dinner was ... interesting. Firstly, they only had a booking for three people so a bit of shuffling had to happen for our table. The menu was new and quite impressive. I had the Kamchatka Scallops, which were served with shiitake mushrooms and a form of ‘onion wire’ over the top. Very well done. John, on the other hand, ordered beef tartare, and this came with the Executive Chef to prepare and present it. Start with a metal bowl, egg yolk and a bit of oil to make your initial sauce, add the beef, some Georgian spiced tomato sauce, a few other condiments and then serve it, topped with shavings of a frozen foie gras. Interesting, although John seemed to like it. Now, unfortunately, Charlie, Ben and Fran had only ordered a main, and this arrived at the same time as our entree, which meant that when Todd, John and myself received our mains, they had nothing to do but watch us eat. Odd. I had the Grilled Lamb Neck and it was perfect. They’d even managed to crisp the skin. At this time the Executive Chef arrived to ask how everything was as it was a new menu. We told him about the quality of the food, but were a bit flummoxed over the timing. He was NOT happy with the serving staff, and went off to have some words with them. Considering it gets a write up as being almost Michelin quality, this service was appalling.
Ben, Todd and myself went for a walk afterwards back to Red Square and around the city and managed to get some slightly impressive night photos.
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