Moscow, Part I

In October, we took a trip to Moscow. Emily studied Russian for several years and used to perform Russian dance, so she had been itching to go for some time now. Of course, it did not take too much to convince me to travel to an interesting land so filled with history. In preparation, I picked up Tolstoy's "War and Peace" about 4 months ago (free download on Kindle)....however, I must admit I am only about a quarter of the way through the book....so I did not get it done before the trip. Oh well, it seems to focus more on St Petersburg anyways. :)
It was a short trip, so we decided to focus our efforts on Moscow and try to see everything we could in this amazing city. It is about the size of New York City, but does not boast skyscrapers. Instead, it has some of the most beautiful architecture and one of the best subway systems I have ever ridden on. The buildings are so iconic, you can feel the history radiating from them. A few months before the trip, we were talking to my High School friend Chad Staker and his wife Brie about our plans. Fortunately, the decided to join us and booked a trip as well. Since they are now living in Denver, we don't get to see them very much....so it was nice to spend time with them, albeit halfway around the world.

Chad, Brie, and Emily just outside of The Kremlin

in front of the Tsar Cannon - the largest cannon in the world, cast in 1586

The Assumption Cathedral
(sorry, no pics allowed inside most of these buildings)

Ivan the Great Belltower

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier (WWII)

Lenin's Tomb

Chad and Brie in the Red Square in front of St. Basil's Cathedral

narrow passageway inside St. Basil's

the inside of St. Basil's
(most of the cathedrals had inner walls adorned with elaborate paintings)

As we were walking around the city, we noticed a lot of police and TV news vans. We decided to see what the commotion was about. They had red carpet rolled out leading up to the world famous Bolshoi Theatre. It is one of the oldest opera and ballet theatres in the world. Apparently it had been under a nearly $700 million renovation for the last 6 years, and we were lucky enough to be in town when it had its grand reopening! Unfortunately, we are not A List so we didn't get invited to actually go inside for the premier (but we did catch a little of it on TV in our hotel room after dinner).

the world renowned Bolshoi Theatre

We visited the Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics, which is located underground, just under the Monument to the Conquerors of Space. It was interesting to see the old Russian space propaganda which acted to poke fun at the USA for being second place to space. We may have put a man on the moon, but they did beat us in sending a person to outer space and in putting a satellite into orbit. You can thank the Russians next time you use your cell phone. :)

Monument to the Conquerors of Space

We wanted to see some Communist era buildings, and we stumbled upon the All Russia Exhibition Centre. It was quite bizarre. Outside was a sort of free-for-all open market where we saw people standing in the cold, holding one or two items for sale. Most were selling handmade clothing, but other items ranged from live pets stuffed into the front of their coats (kittens, puppies, birds, ferrets, you name it) to outdated CDs, to taser guns. As Chad looked closer to see if the random guy was actually selling a taser, the guy hit the trigger to show us how it arced a menacing spark. Uh, OK buddy, no thanks. I can only speculate that this place would get even more shady after dark, but after my near death experience in Israel, I was not about to stick around to find out.

the Exhibition Centre

Well, this post is getting a little long, so I will wrap it up here for now. I'll try to get the rest of the Moscow adventure up soon....