Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Sunday, 14 July. Unfortunately, the schedule for Moscow (as well as for St. Petersburg) was a hectic one. We were up at 6:30, went to breakfast at 7:15, and caught the bus for the Moscow city tour at 8:15. Breakfast, incidentally, was excellent, with a buffet featuring cereals, breads, pastries, meats, cheeses, boiled eggs, yogurt, fresh fruit, and juices. Then you could order such things as omelets, bacon, fried sausage, pancakes, etc. from the waitress at your table.
The bus took us to the south side of the city where our first stop was at the beautiful New
Maiden (Novodevichy) Convent (1524), situated on a bend in the Moscow River. It was one of
a
series of fortified monasteries constructed as an outlying defensive chain. This particular convent
was once the most popular destination for high-ranking women banished from Tsar's court.
Next we drove through an "exclusive" area of huge VIP guesthouses and similar buildings
in the southwest part of the city. We continued on to the top of Sparrow Hill, the highest point in
Moscow. (Moscow is very flat, though, so even its highest hill is not very high). One of the "Seven Sisters," seven very similar Stalinist-style
skyscrapers, is located there and, during our ride through the city, we saw the other six as well
(some from a distance).
Then we visited the grand World War II memorial obelisk and park, as well as the adjacent St. George's church, and Bow Hill. This tiny hill (really a small mound) is where Napoleon stood and "bowed" toward Moscow after his troops captured it. (The big clock of grass and flowers actually works.) Nearby was an Arch of Triumph built to celebrate the Russian victory over Napoleon.
By this time we had learned that Moscow has three concentric "ring" roads, but we were
far from being oriented to the city and had no idea where the tour all took us. However, among
the numerous sights our guide pointed out during the ride were the houses of Pushkin and
Tchaikovsky, the Dumas (parliament), the Bolshoi Theater (1824), and the infamous Lubjanka
(secret police headquarters, interrogation center and temporary prison).
About 10:30 we arrived at Red Square. We learned that the "red" has nothing to do with
either the color or the Communist Party, but means "beautiful." The bus parked in a huge open
area below and behind St. Basil's Cathedral where we had a nice view, not only of the church, but
of the Kremlin walls and towers as well. [At this point we finally understood the relationship
between Red Square and the Kremlin. A "kremlin" is simply a walled fortress, and many old
Russian towns had them. Red Square abuts one wall of the Moscow Kremlin, but is entirely
outside of and separate from it.]
Our group walked up the hill into Red Square, suffering in the 90+ degree temperature. Our first sight was Lenin's Tomb, on the west side near the Kremlin wall. There was a barricade across the width of the Square, keeping us in the south third of it. Apparently the barricades are put up when Lenin's Tomb is open so they can keep the people in an orderly line. Surprisingly, the lines for the Tomb are still long, entailing a considerable wait. [Some of our friends visited the Tomb a couple of days later. They found that they could avoid the line entirely by slipping the guard a dollar.] The State History Museum at the north end of the Square was completely covered by scaffolding.
The G.U.M. department store covers most of the east side of the Square, opposite the Kremlin. Our guide led the group into the store when it opened at 11:00. It really isn't a department store at all, but rather a mall with hundreds of separate shops. Instead of browsing GUM, Jane and I decided to use the half hour before the bus left to see the interior of St. Basil's.
This church was commissioned by Czar Ivan the Terrible in 1552 to celebrate the Russian victory over the Mongols who had dominated Russia for more than two centuries. It consists of eight individual chapels, each with a dome of distinctive style and color, clustered together around one central belfry. Each chapel is dedicated to the saint whose feast day coincides with the date of one of the eight major victories over the Mongols.
Even though we'd been told about the eight chapels inside, we hadn't realized that's all that's there. There is no traditional church with a nave. After seeing the chapels on the main floor, we started upstairs to see the chapels up there. I was already up when Jane found that she couldn't manage the steep and uneven steps. I tried to go back to her, but the guard upstairs wouldn't let me go back down the way I'd come up, so we were separated. It was like a maze up there, but I finally found another way out and joined Jane outside. We walked down to the bus which took us back to the Tolstoy for a nice lunch. We had signed up for an optional tour of the Pushkin Museum, after the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, the finest art museum in Russia. The bus took us there at 2:00 p.m. The museum features mostly art from western Europe, most notably the French Impressionists (Monet, Renoir, Matisse). However, there are antiquities from Babylonia, Assyria, and Egypt as well, and even some Byzantine art. The greatest attraction for us, though, was the Schliemann's Gold exhibit, featuring treasures he found while excavating Troy. They had been in a museum in Berlin for many years but disappeared when the city was captured near the end of World War II. They finally were "discovered" in Moscow 50 years later and put on display in 1996. It was a great thrill for me to see these artifacts from Troy.
We had been warned that the museum was not air conditioned, and it was extremely hot and humid inside. That must have been very hard on the many masterpiece paintings on display. (The large hall housing the Schliemann exhibit was the only air conditioned room, even though the treasures there would not have been affected by heat or humidity.) Many of the paintings were poorly displayed as well, often in poor light or reflecting the glare of a nearby window.
By 4:00 we'd had enough of the museum and its many steps. Since we still had over an
hour before we had to meet at the bus, we walked across the street to the huge cathedral of Christ
the Savior. Like many "old" churches in Russia, this one was only recently rebuilt, the original
having been destroyed in a concerted anti-religious campaign under Stalin. It is a magnificent
structure and must have cost a fortune to rebuild. To do this in a country where, as we were told
at least a dozen times, "there isn't any money," the government must have a strong commitment
to restoring the Russian Orthodox Church to the national culture.
At 5:15 our bus took us from the Pushkin Museum to the circus. The performance was in a relatively small arena, but it was excellent. The bus got us back to the Tolstoy at 9:00, and we went straight to dinner. They served beef, apparently as a special treat. Although the chef had done his best with it, it was obvious that Russian beef is a far cry from the U.S. variety. It had been a very taxing day, and we were only too happy to get to bed.
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