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And now the time is near and so we draw the final curtain.
It's 11:00 am Moscow time and we've another hour until Zurich. As our flight took off on time and we have a longer layover this leg, we aren't stressing about making this next connection.
From here we have the long hop over the Atlantic to Chicago and then through customs and the last part of the journey by air to Indianapolis. Scheduled to arrive around 7:40 pm, I'm counting on John and Mary G and Charlie to be at Weir Cook with bright shining faces ready to take us to our respective homes.
Yesterday we bussed back to the Kremlin for the visit to the Armory and only one church on Cathedral Square. Ted's group was behind us, but they wheeled him to the front and I overheard his guide tell him that she would tell the Kremlin guard that Ted had a pacemaker. Vadim, our guide, had asked if any of us wore a pacemaker as those people went in a side entrance without going thru the metal detector.
Ted, with or without an artificial heart device, skipped the line and sat in his wheelchair inside the Kremlin walls. At least he had to wait for the rest of his group to get thru the gate. As one member of our group said to me sotto voce, 'money talks.'
Once in the Armory, we ran the gift shop gauntlet again and made our way up the large flight of stairs. I don't remember our guide telling us what purpose the building originally served but it must have been a palace given the opulence of the interior.
We saw items from the 12th century and then again starting in the 15th, the break in between because of the time of the Golden Horde of the Mongols when the Russians had to pay tribute and retained no treasures of the state.
The iconography was interesting as were the golden and bronze bowls and plates. There were huge jewel-encrusted Bibles and baroque designed vases, dating from the time of Catherine the Great. And sets of chain mail and full armor for men, boy and horse. But enough is enough of those for me.
The real interests were the royal carriages and the clothing, where we had very little time to explore. Photography was forbidden so I wasn't able to capture any of these treasures but I'm sure you could see images online.
We could not believe the tiny size of the wedding dresses of Catherine and Alexandra, the last czarina. Fifteen inch waists, tops. Most of the paintings I've seen of Catherine were from her reign and she's depicted as a sturdy and stately monarch. Girth was admired in those times (oh for the same communal attitude) and I was shocked to see how tiny she was at her marriage. On the other hand, I think she was 15 or 16 so there you go.
The church of the Archangel Michael contained the caskets of Ivan the Terrible up thru the male rulers who were entombed at Peter and Paul Cathedral when Peter the Great moved the capital to St. Petersburg.
It was interesting but I think we had been churched out. Rain met us as left the cathedral, as did a military parade / demonstration on the square. A brass band was playing and a phalanx of cadets were marching inside a fenced area of the square. I couldn't see much but with the help of the trusty ubiquitous iPad, I got some pix of the presentation.
There was a brief break in the music so I switched to my video camera and got about six minutes of the demo, complete with horses and the blasting of a cannon. I'm sure that the video quality is even worse than usual as I know I jumped upon hearing the cannon roar.
Leaving the Kremlin, we walked back to the entrance to the Red Square where Mama and I decided to be adventurous and check out, wait for it, some shoe stores in a mall under the Red Square / Kremlin area.
It was three floors underground, and shoe stores abounded. We checked out a couple without falling in love with anything. I almost bought a cheap purple and green fake leather bag but was talked out of it because Mama could smell a funky, man made leather smell.
We finally had our first, and gratefully only, experience with a pay toilet. And once again, I rehearsed my Russian in my head (excuse me, please, where is the ladies' room?) as I approached a young sales woman but it came out garbled and unintelligible. She smiled when I said "Ginskee toil yette" but understood my objective. In halting English she told me that it was down one floor.
We nabbed the elevator and was taken aback by the buttons which read -1, -2, and -3. Luckily we knew we needed the middle floor so pushed -2 and voila, the sign for the WC was just ten feet down the hall.
Having very little Russian rubles (рублем) I was hoping that it would be cheap and it was. Only twenty. Per person, as I was adamantly told by the little cranky babushka who slammed the sign down on the counter and shook her finger "one" at me after I dropped my coins on her plate and took Mama's arm to go inside. I shook my head and her and said, "nyet, I'm just going in to hold her packages" and luckily she just gave me the evil eye and directed her attention to the next wave of people approaching her counter.
We searched for a book store but just like the Fashion Mall and College Mall, no such luck. Either e-readers have really killed the brick and mortars or people just don't read anymore.
Stopping in a couple of places, we asked several people if they spoke English. The majority looked at us, quite bored, and shook their heads. One woman pulled over her teenaged daughter to try to understand us. We lucked out there. Her English wasn't great, but we understood each other well enough to learn that there were no bookstores anywhere in the area.
So off to the Metro and the Green Line to get back to the Terminal. The subway ride was a piece of cake but the '15 minute' walk from there to the ship was another story.
We had a little map but it held the bare outlines from Point A (Metro) to Point B (Viking Helgi). I, of course, brought us up the wrong exit so we emerged up top on the opposite of the station than we needed. Heading off in what I thought was the right direction to the pier, we quickly backtracked and tried again.
Passing a canine policeman, I "eez vee nee zee a'ed" to beg his pardon and asked him to "gDEEya" and pointed to the terminal on the map. He had no clue.
His German Shepard was fussing, as it must have been his prowling time or else he was allergic to a silly American, so our guy forcefully shushed him, pulled out his own map and finally pointy vaguely in the opposite direction. Спасубo'ing, I grabbed the map and off we went again, thru another set of shops (no shoe stores) and out the other side.
Suffice it to say we made it to the ship, but after taking the scenic route. We probably walked a half an hour rather than the fifteen everyone quoted us.
Missing lunch, it was the only day we consumed less than 3000 calories apiece.
I napped while Mama packed, and then got my stuff together before going to dinner. I'd brought a luggage scale with me which is a brilliant device. At home, my larger suitcase weighed 36 lbs. on the ship, it had gained 11 lbs. Better it than me! Knowing that these hand- held weights can be off +/- a couple of pounds, I still breathed a sigh of relief that my little tschotsches wouldn't put my bag over the legal limit.
- comments
mama Can we get this printed??????
Lisa Yes, we can. Let's add more pix, with yours, and then do it.