Red Square and Gold Class!

Saturday 29 July

Today we left St Petersburg behind to continue our adventure further into deepest Russia towards Siberia!!

Hotel Kempinski was one of the best hotels we have ever stayed in – expensive - but top class food, bedroom, bathroom, service and facilities. It’s only a shame that I didn’t get time to try the Jacuzzi (an absolutely huge tub – just right for a party) – the running machine and exercise bikes and rowers would have been just too much. If I had to be picky – the bathroom smelt a bit “drainy” in the middle of the night – the only thing I can find to fault. To think just a few days ago we were sad at leaving “the cell” – this is at the exact opposite end of the spectrum.

As we left we were given a couple of large carrier bags (smart paper type with the hotel crest on the side) containing our lunch box! As I said in yesterday’s blog, the Russians are very hot on food. The bags contained 2 large salads, 2 submarine size open cheese, ham and tomato rolls, and about 10 fresh apricots, plus two bottles of water – just a little snack to see us through to the airport!

Moscow Domestic Airport is chaotic but run like a machine. When we got to luggage check in both of our cases were overweight (what a surprise?) – Colin by 3 kgs and me by 5kgs! (I think Colin must have dumped some of his gear in my case!) and we had to pay. We didn’t have enough roubles left and the lady certainly wasn’t going to sign our paperwork until we paid in full so we handed over 400 roubles and got 30 roubles change! Urr you don’t argue with some of these Russian women and she was just such one! So it cost us about 8.50 GBP to get on the plane – not really worth all the hassle of trying keep our weight down, but we will repack our luggage before Vladivostok and try again. And surprise! Surprise! we got fed cheese rolls and fruit juice on the plane.

Moscow is a city of high rise flats and wide main streets, with shops we can easily recognize – IKEA, Mango, McDonalds, Zara, etc. We are only staying for one night in the Hotel Metropol, a very large formal hotel with lots of dark brown wood, but its right next to Red Square and the Kremlin. We have a very large room with queen size bed and the only complaints are that its miles from the Reception Lobby and breakfast and there’s no safe or internet connection in the room (we can connect in the Business Centre, but that costs lots of units (?x?) – it was free at the Kempinski.)

Tonight we have been on a short tour of St Basils Cathedral at the far end of Red Square (where they served us shots of vodka and caviar whilst entertaining us with music on the balalaika and singing). It is so much smaller than I imagined, a series of eight small chapels surrounding a larger central chapel shaped like a tent (about 10 feet round). It was built in the sixteenth century and many of the floor bricks are worn from the constant pounding of the feet of worshippers and pilgrims. All the walls are painted in colourful floral designs or have highly decorated icons celebrating the life of Christ and St Basil – one of those 16th century monks who prayed a lot and philosophised a whoe lot more but who helped Ivan the Terrible believe that his “terrible” actions were OK!.

Onwards for a quick trundle through the most enormous shopping arcade in the world – three lanes, each about four hundred yards long by three floors tall – all designer shops (though sadly no time to stop for shopping) and a visit to yet another traditional Russian restaurant – this time we had blinis with red caviar and chicken kiev which was different.

We decided to have a short stroll to walk our dinner off and returned to Red Square which was now all lit up. St Basils looks like the gingerbread house from Hansel and Gretel, the shopping centre (called GUM – you can apparently look it up on the internet at www.gum.ru) is lit up like Harrods, only much, much more, and the Kremlin looks like some romantic castle, from a bygone age. They are currently demolishing a hotel built in the 60s that held 6000 guests that backs on to the Square – and they were still working at 11.00 at night! That’s Russian workers for you! We are going inside the Kremlin tomorrow which will be an experience.

Standing in the middle of Red Square and remembering the television pictures of tanks and hundreds of soldiers frog-marching in front on Lenin’s tomb and saluting the Russian Leaders, such as Kruchev, Breshnev and Gorbochev, is quite surreal. It’s much smaller than you think. But the atmosphere here in Moscow is much more leisurely and easy going than St Petersburg. There are lots of people just strolling around the Square at the end of the evening, with no feeling of being on a frantic journey to who knows where. I think we would enjoy spending more time here, except for all the panic to get a visa to enter Russia (for shopping?!!).

Somehow we seem to have been booked into Gold Class on the train – in fact, on further research with Millie and Jim, we seem to have had upgraded rooms throughout this tour. We are not quite sure how this has come about, but at this stage we are not asking too many questions in case there’s been a mistake!!!!

It’s now midnight again, and we have an early start tomorrow – by 08.40 we have to have had brekky, have our cases packed and be on the coach ready for the Kremlin. We board the train at 14.00, it leaves at 14.08 (!) precisely and its lunch at 14.15. There are some120 people on this tour (all ages from 60 to 95!!) so it will be a logistical nightmare to get everyone on board on time – but so far GW Travel seem to have everything under control.