We arrived in Moscow by mid-morning and started our first excursion at 1:30. Bussed about 45 minutes to the center of town, our local guide gave us whiplash as she repeated a constant litany of "on your right...... on your left..... on your left...." I took a bazillion pictures but have very little clue re: what gray building was what Soviet headquarters and what cathedral as in honor of which saint and which palace was inhabited by which revolutionary, author, doctor, governor, nobility, etc.

Our first stop was at Sparrow Hill, which gave us a panoramic view of the city and the Seven Sisters. Unfortunately, it was hazy so I could barely make out the different 'attractions' our guide was pointing. The Olympic ski jump, which seems to land in the Volga but apparently doesn't, a couple of stadiums constructed for the 1980 Olympics, multiple cathedral spires were all that I could discern. Oh well.

Parked against the plaza was a little 'Smartie' car (shout out to both Joe and Erica/Owen) that had signage all over it. The guy popped out, flipped up the hatch-back and lo and behold there was a huge-o cappuccino machine! How delightful! That guy had a niche market going on and gave me a wonderful business idea for when Student Records tanks. (And no one better steal it from me!)

We got a picture here with our buddy Mark Foreman, a retiree from Columbia MO who was born and raised on a farm by Richmond, Indiana. He is a Purdue grad, but we don't hold that against him. I gave him our Columbia connections (Camellia Cosgray and David Beversdorf) who knows whether his paths will cross with theirs?

Before we left that location, we availed ourselves of our first public potty stop. I was going to take a picture coz I had only heard of these types of toilets before, but the line was long and the smell was ripe and I booked out of there as quickly as I could.

They weren't exactly my understanding (ha! I made a funny here with the word standing) of a Turkish toilet, but they must be damn close. They were walled stalls with locking doors, and one went up two bricked steps to straddle a hole in the floor that was surrounded by a toilet seat. And the floors were tiled. WTF? A classy 'squatty potty' as some of the women were calling it? They flushed, but I didn't see the handle. And there was a little waste basket there full of damp toilet paper. (No paper was provided.) Luckily, I had one of the 80 (I kid you not.... I went a little compulsive on the pocket tissue shopping at the Dollar Tree) packets of tissues so I was saved. Man, I can't complain about Student Records because the worst job ever would be to empty those waste baskets.

And that's enough about former soviet toilets.

From there we bussed to one of the oldest Metro stations, on the west side of Moscow. Can't remember the title of this one, but I did get a couple of pictures of the glorious mosiac mural and the marble benches inside.

JR wouldn't have survived the escalator down to the station as it went forever. I think the guide said 80 meters but I don't know if that is right, long or ridiculous.

Our guides were our rock stars at this point, as the local was at the head of our group and Vadim at the end as they stretched us all along the platform to embark at the same time. They counseled us that if we didn't make it on the car, to stay put and someone would come back. And if we didn't make it off the car at the correct stop (four later) to get off at the next stop and wait.

We all successfully disembarked at Revolution Square, which was the name of the station at Red Square. Rock stars, I tell you.

We walked past a museum to a statue of a horseman, encountering Sully from Monsters, Inc, the Ice Age creature who always holds an acorn and a couple of other random creatures from those movies (Pixar?) I high-fived one of them and about keeled over from the BO. I know they have to sweat like pig-dogs in those heavy costumes and who knows when it last was cleaned.

We were to meet back at the statue in an hour and a half, so I made a mental note of the shops across the street (Pandora called to us) as we followed the guide thru the Royal Gates into Red Square and St. Basil's Cathedral.

When we entered, we noticed that the square was barricaded with temporary fencing. With stern-looking police standing behind.

It enabled us to get pictures of the Square, Lenin's Tomb and St. Basil's with no people in the foreground, but it also prevented us from seeing them up close and personal. They said that there was a concert that evening, so the square was closed.

We trooped through GUM, the former only department store which is now a high-end mall (pictures included) to 1) find another public potty and B) get around to see St. Basil's Cathedral from a closer and more strategic location.

Two helicopters flew overhead and our local told us that the president can call up the helicopter at any time. We began wondering if it was indeed he.

Mama and I decided to go back to Red Square to have the 50 remaining minutes to check out GUM a little more and see the shops across from the horseman statue (a girl can only handle so many cathedrals) so we made our way back to GUM.

We located the washroom, on the third floor, and were fortunate to take escalators on our ascent. Not so lucky coming down, as of the six we saw only one went down. Damn. So we descended slowly as Mama's artificial right knee had taken a beating already with the walking.

We ran into several of our bus group, chatting a bit. Leaving them in GUM (which was celebrating it's 120th anniversary with balloons) we popped out of the store and found, to our dismay, fencing/barricades right at the corner where we needed to turn to get back thru the gates to find the horseman statue. And that's where the fun began.

We walked down the street (the middle of which was also blocked by barricades as men were blasting squares out of the center of the cement to inlay new bricks so concrete dust was pervasive) and peered into each shop to see if any cut all the way thru to the other side. None did. Not even the shoe store. (So yes, Virginia, Lisa did a little shoe shopping in Russia.)

We walked and walked and ran into an Australian lady (Jackie) who was traveling alone. She was distressed as she had made it to that end of the block, more barricades, and was told by the sole person who spoke English to go back to the end (where we had just been) and 'turn right.' If that were possible, we all would have already done that.

So we walk and walk back towards the GUM corner and run into more of our group. By now we've spent 15 minutes trying to navigate thru the Red Square entrance to get thru the gates back to the horse. No luck. Nyet.

Finally we see a clump of bus 4C people (Viking sign held prominently aloft by their local tour guide) so we join the clump for instructions.

We see our guide standing next to GUM, gesticulating wildly as she yelled on her cell phone. Five more minutes and Vadim, our guide from the ship, appears with a couple more people. With ten minutes to go, twelve of our thirty-one peeps were hovering around these two guides who seemed to have no clue how to handle it.

I get that the concert was somehow impromptu and no one knew that the square would be closed. But they need a registrar among them. We have contingency plans in case of unexpected disaster (actually called PUD for planned unexpected down-time). They had no such forethought. So our chick takes the Viking 4E sign (for our bus number) and tells us to follow her. She's hiking it back down the street again and we have two people with serious walking issues in the group. I run up to ask her to slow down, which she does, and we eventually all make it to the Jackie end of the street - along with half of Moscow who also had no idea the square would be sequestered. We're diverted another direction, and pass wall after wall of the fences.

Finally we get thru to the main market square where we'd seen Sully and Ice Age squirrely dude and we run into another wall of fences. Our guide tries to get the police to let us cross over to the statue, especially as we watch a continual flow of people coming towards us, but nyet. Those people are allowed OUT of the square but we can't enter.

We all squeeze thru the sides of a barricade, at the police's direction, to cross the street to enter another set of shops. (Hello Pandora!) We are caught in a stream of people and again, some are struggling to keep up with her as she turns corners and it feels like we leave that mall thru the employees' entrance.

By now it's almost 6:00, which is ten minutes after we were suppose to rendezvous. She tells us to stay along the wall/ barricade and she convinces a policeman to let her go the thirty yards to the status to rescue anyone who had made it to the spot.