We arrived in Moscow in the late afternoon and were met by our transfer guy who greeted us by saying "Saleem". I stupidly thought that this must be the way to say "hello" in Russian and so a few minutes later I asked him "So 'Saleem' is how you say 'hello' in Russian?" Turns out his name was Saleem.

We drove to our hotel and checked in to the beautiful Hyatt Park right in the heart of Moscow. At 6:00 our guide met us at the hotel and took us for a fantastic Armenian meal, along with the other 8 members of our small tour group.

The next morning we went for an orientation tour around the city. The first thing that strikes you about Moscow is the cleanliness. There is no garbage anywhere and no graffiti to be seen at all. Apparently the penalties for graffiti are one year's salary, so nobody does it.

We saw some incredible buildings around Moscow, including the magnificent St Basil's Cathedral, which is the onion-domed, multi-coloured church that epitomises Russia. We also saw an hilarious monument that is a massive tall ship made of bronze with a figure standing in front of it that has the body of Christopher Columbus, wearing a Spanish uniform, and the head of Peter the Great. Apparently a Russian sculptor made it with the head of Christopher Columbus and tried to sell it to the Americans for $10 million. They didn't want to buy it, so he replaced the head with Peter the Great and it is now displayed on the river in Moscow. Our guide called it Peter Columbus.

Our guide, Leonid, was a funny guy who had the habit of repeating himself constantly in rapid fire English. For example, our first stop was at a massive Russian art gallery, and in a thick Russian accent Leonid announced "OK, OK. So, we are here. Yes, yes, yes, very good, very good, very nice, yes, yes, yes."

The gallery was incredible, with some amazing paintings by famous Russian artists and we spent a couple of hours here admiring the fantastic art work.

After this we passed the Kremlin and some incredible gold-domed churches, but the highlight of the day was the Metro subway stations. Most of them were built in 1938 and they are truly magnificent. The first thing you notice about them is that there is absolutely no advertising materials anywhere. No posters all over the walls and not one billboard. The next thing you notice is that they are incredibly clean. No grime or dirt anywhere. Then you realise that, although you are at times more than 80 metres below street level, the air is clean and fresh. But the most spectacular thing about the subway stations is the architecture and decorations. Each one is different and they are all breathtaking. We stopped at stations that had many archways with bronze statues on each side of every arch, one with mosaics between each arch, and another with lead-light windows. Some had massive chandeliers in them. They were almost palatial in design.

The only thing that marred our visit to the subways was in one station while we were walking down a flight of steps. A man stumbled down the steps past one of the ladies in our group, then fell against another commuter, spun around and fell straight down the steps, landing face-down on the ground with a sickening thud. He didn't even put his hands up to shield his fall and he lay there motionless. Another commuter turned him over and he was completely out cold. At least we hope he was out cold. Conspiracy theories abounded amongst our group, from drunkenness to novichok poisoning, and it was very confronting.

When we arrived back at the hotel, we went to the bar. Lidia ordered a cup of tea, which was delivered with a small dish of raspberry jam. We asked the waiter what the jam was for and he said "For anything you want." We looked it up on the internet and apparently the Russians always serve their tea with jam. They either use it to sweeten their tea or they eat it and drink their tea in between. I ordered a neat Beluga vodka, which was delish.

That evening, Lidia and I explored Moscow by ourselves, walking to the Red Square, which is right next to the Kremlin.

The following day we visited Red Square and the Kremlin with our tour group. On the way, Leonid explained to us that there is little to no crime in Moscow. His theory is that Putin promoted all of the criminals to Government, so there are none on the street any more. "Yes, yes, yes, very good, very nice."

The Kremlin was fascinating. We didn't realise that the word "Kremlin" means "Fortress" and the Kremlin is a walled area with fortress towers that used to be the inner city. It now houses three cathedrals, a couple of churches, the government offices and the Presidential palace. There is also a beautiful botanic garden there. There are no birds in the garden because the pigeons and crows were damaging the gold-domed cathedrals and so the Russians have trained eight falcons who live in the Kremlin grounds to kill all the other birds.

As you are walking inside the walled area, there is a road between most of the structures and the government offices where Putin works. Soldiers guard the road and Leonid explained that if you step onto the road, a soldier will blow his whistle. One whistle means "get off the road". Two whistles means "No really, get off the road". Three whistles means you're off to Siberia.

Our tour finished at lunchtime and we went to the Bolshoi restaurant attached to the Bolshoi theatre for lunch. We ordered Borsch and Stroganoff, both of which were delicious.

After lunch we went for a walk and bought some matryoshka (babushka) dolls, which are everywhere here.

That night we waited for the sun to go down at 9:30pm and then went for another walk to Red Square and took some photos of the magnificent buildings, all lit up. This added another dimension to these beautiful structures.

As a final note, I like to learn some common words in each foreign language so that I can try to use them whenever possible with the locals. I looked up the word for "thank you" in Russian and it was "spasibo". I tried to commit this to memory and then shortly afterwards someone asked me how I was going with the local language. I confidently answered "Great, placebo!"