Today will be a very long day, with three separate tours, Red Square area in the morning, the Kremlin area in the afternoon, and a "Moscow by Night" tour in the evening.
We are still adjusting to the time change and did not sleep well last night. The AC in the room is noisy and while I can sleep through it, David keeps waking up. We get up about 5 am. We have several batteries to keep charged--the I phone, the laptop, and two cameras, so we charge some in the evening and some in the morning.
Breakfasts on board are open seating and self-serve. There is quite a variety of tasty food. Always a hot cereal-called porridge--though it is a somewhat different grain each day. There is yogurt with fruit and without. There are a variety of cheeses and vegetables. Hard boiled eggs and scrambled eggs labelled omelette, bacon and sausages. There are three types of dry cereals. The "pancakes" are about quarter-size. There is no syrup, but jelly and honey.There are fruit juices and a fruit salad of several diced fruits-apples and bananas, kiwi, oranges and grapefruits, grapes. The waitresses serve coffee and tea.
Our waitress is Anastasia. She does not speak English, but is eager to please.
The ship has its own water treatment system. The final step is a boiler which holds about two gallons of water at near boiling temperatures. Passenger can fill water bottles from this source, but if you do, you must carry a towel with you to use as a pot holder as the bottles are too hot to hold in your unprotected hand. Of course, it is possible to buy bottled water on the ship.
When we go on shore to board the bus for the tour, we again have to sort out where we belong. The other passengers have been booked as groups by their travel agencies. David made our own arrangements, so we do not have a"group". When we ask for help, the guides ask "what is your group number?" And we do not have a number. Eventually they sort this out and assign us to group 4. At least it is an English-speaking group. From time to time across the entire cruise, this problem continues to haunt us. For example, we are seated at a table by ourselves for meals.
We board the bus. It is clean and runs well. The Moscow traffic is amazingly bad. Vehicles seem continuously jammed, moving only a few feet at a time. It takes more than an hour to reach the city center. Our local guide is Dimitri. He is outstanding. His English is very good and he is very knowledgeable, and has a great sense of humor. He fills our travel time with information on the history of Moscow, and points out churches and other buildings as we drive.
We exit the bus near Red Square. Of course, souvenier kiosks are everywhere. There are many tour groups, trooping dutifully after their guides. We pass a circular metal plate in the concrete. Our guide says this is considered the center of the world and the distance to all points in Russia are measured from this spot in Moscow. He says the folklore is that if one stands on this spot and tosses a coin in the air, the person's wish will come true. There are several older Russian women called "babuskas" (grandmother) who scramble with each other to collect the coins as they are tossed.
Our guide tells us that the Russian word for Red is the same as Beautiful, and that the square was meant to be called Beautiful Square, but was interpreted as Red Square. We go through a metal detector before entering the area. The Square is very large, but not as big as Tiennemen Square in China. All along one side is a giant shopping area. It used to be the government store called GUM, but now is privately owned and is three stories of fancy shops, restaurants and botiques. Looks like Harrod's.
The assistant guide takes a group of us to the ATM and bank inside the shopping center. We withdraw Rubles from the machine, while others exchange currency.
The guide walks us all around the square. At one end is the famous symbol of Moscow, St.Basil church--the one with the multiple multi-colored domes. He says it is actually called the Church of the Ascention. There is much construction activity going on inside the square. They are erecting stadium stands for an International Marching Band Exhibition which will be held in early Spetember. We see other sites such as the Ascention Gates, and the Byzantine of St George, the patron saint of Moscow. We see the Mausoleum where Lenin is buried. There is a huge queue of people waiting to go inside the museum.We take lots of photos.
Lunch is in town at a large restaurant designed for groups of tourists. It is a typical Russian lunch-cabbage salad, borscht soup, bread and a chicken stew. Dessert is two small crepes and honey. Afterward, we browse through the gift shop on the way to the bus. It is now 2 pm and we drive to the Kremlin, stopping on the way for a spectacular panoramic view of Moscow from the highest point in town called Swallow Hill. The guide says there is great misconcention--people think the Kremlin is only one building, whereas it is an entire complex of buildings, including three churches. He jokes that the Kremlin is the tallest area in Moscow, because you can see clear to Siberia from here. There is a 40 ton czar's cannon and huge bells. The guide tells us that many bells all over Russia were sacrificed and melted down for war equipment.We tour the inside of the byzantine church and the guide educates us about Russian Icons--how each level of icons in the churches have differing religious significance. For example, one level is the Old Testament "saints". We watch the ceremonial guards marching. We see the building housing Putin's offices, with the parameter lined by cannons that defeated Napoleon, and also the much smaller cannons taken from the defeated army.
This tour over, we board for an even longer retourn trip back to the boat-more than two hours. The bus driver tries some different routes to try to get around the traffic.
Back on board, we eat dinner with a couple from South Africa, then get ready for the night tour. We have the same amazing guide. We stop at Victory Park which has a huge clock made of flowers. There are many fountains. It is a popular place with the locals who are eating at outdoor restaurants, or roller blading or walking around holding hands. We get on the Metro and ride to four stations. Moscow is famous for its elaborate decor of marble, paintings, statues in the undergound stations. No grafitti. One depicts the lives of common people, farmers and carpenters. One is scenes from the revolution. Trains run every 2 to 3 minutes and bring the masses from the outskirts of Moscow into the city to work. Imagine what traffic would be like without the metro! By the way, young people immediately got up to offer seats to us "older folks" on the tour. We go back to Red Square to see it lit up at night and were delighted to watch a laser light show on the domes of St.Basil's church. We stop at the Novodevichy Convent, beautifully illuminated at night and look at it across the lake-a stunning sight--this is where Swan Lake was written. The lake surface is so calm we can take photos which perfectly reflect the buildings of the convent in the water.We are nodding on the way back to the ship. More Moscow tomorrow!
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