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Wednesday : Sunny
Well that's it all over red rover last night and day in the UK. Well morning. We had an absolute blast the two years we were over here. We have seen and done a lot of things and met a lot of fantastic people. Its time to go and we are more than ready.
Too easy to get to the airport today, it's right across the street! We quickly moved through a few big lines at bag drop off and security. Then had a short wait before we were on the plane, then we had a long wait. Before we took off we sat on the runway for one hour. So that meant for an extra hour I had a future star Russian Footballer kicking the bejesus out of my seat. Ah he was driving me mental!
Anyways we touched down safely and thats when the fun began. Welcome to Mother Russia! In the large passport check line I was still very anxious about our visas not working. It was a screw around to get them, and all I was thinking about was where will we fly too if they don't work. So seeing a little green arrow light up in front of me and given back my passport, I was quite relieved.
We followed the signs for the express train to Moscow. We found someone working at a ticket booth who spoke a little English and was very helpful. Then we boarded the train to Moscow city centre. It took 40mins enough time to have a power nap and only £6.
That was the easy part done, now we had to deal with the metro trains. The lady back at the airport sorted us out with airport and metro combo tickets, and a Moscow metro map. That was good because it saved us lining up again, but didn't help us much because there was no English in the metro stations. We had to change trains twice and all we saw was Russian and the map we had was in English/Russian we needed a map with English/Russian & Russian/Russian.
Anyways with a bit of luck and patience we some how negotiated Moscow metro in peak hour. Once above ground we still had map dramas. We couldn't use our English/Russian map nothing corresponded. So we try to get our bearings and winged it. Amazingly we fluked it and came out of the correct metro exit which made it a lot easier.
We soon were at the Hostel after a short walk from the station. It's just a share room in some dude named Alec's house, but it's quiet with only five people staying there and two are leaving tomorrow. It should do just fine.
Once settled we walked to the Red Square. Another plus for the Hostel, it only took about 15-20mins to get there. The Red Square looked amazing, the domes on top of Basil's Cathedral to the south the walls and tower of the Kremlin to the west, National Museum to the north and the Gum department store to the east.
We had a walk down to the river for a look around. It had some good views in at the Kremlin, and cathedral from the bridge. There were some other impressive buildings scattered around Moscow's centre too. We walked back up to the square and had a seat. We booked ourselves in for a free walking tour tomorrow, which hopefully will inform us a bit more about the area we are standing in. After the phone call we continued our walk through the square where it looked like they were getting set up for a military parade that maybe happening soon.
It was getting late so we walked up past Lenin's mausoleum towards the resurrection Gate and went inside the very flashy Gum department store. Very nice shops indeed, it has a glass roof and the sections are all linked by arched bridges. We found a great restaurant that filled us up really well too, and it was nice and cheap Russian grub. We had some salads meatloaf and pork snitzel both came with veg, cabbage and zucchini. Drinks and fruit cocktails for desert all for £8 each. Not too bad for right next to Red square, think we will pay them another visit, in the next few days.
After dinner we made our way home and stopped off at a shop to buy some drinks and breakfast, once home we met two other hostel guests. The three others are from Brasil, we had a few chats then got cleaned up for bed. Pretty impressed with Moscow so far that's for sure.
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cathy Rutar Aaaaah Budda's back