Trips

Tues., 9/22/15 – St. Petersburg to Moscow
        We had breakfast at our hotel buffet at 6:45 and to the airport at 7:30 AM.  Security, check in, and passport checks went smoothly.  We flew S7 (Siberian Air), the lime-green airline.  The plane hit the ground hard on landing in Moscow but otherwise it was a pleasant hour and a half ride.  We even had chicken or cheese tortilla wraps with our beverage service.
        We arrived at our hotel, The Metropol, after an hour ride from the new domestic airport, Domodedovo.  Moscow has three airports. At 2:30 PM we had lunch at a British Queen Restaurant where no one spoke English.  Lunch was good.
          After lunch, Migle took us on a tour of Red Square.  Red can refer to the color or the old Russian word that means beautiful.  The square was for markets in the 1400’s and for the display of military power after WWII.  We entered through Resurrection Gate that is a copy of what Lenin tore down after Russia’s victory over the Nazis.  Lenin wanted tanks and artillery to enter the square for parades.  Next to the gate is a history museum on one side and Our Lady of Kazan Church on the other.  The 1700’s church was torn down in Soviet times but has also been reconstructed.  The GUM department store – really a shopping mall - takes up the side opposite the Kremlin wall and Lenin’s mausoleum.  There are also statues of important Russians like Stalin, Brezhnev, and Gagarin who are buried in the Kremlin wall.  St. Basil’s Church, built in the 1500’s with its fairytale domes, is at the opposite end of the cobblestone square.  The entrance to the Kremlin (which means fortress) from the square is through the clock tower. The statue in front of St. Basil’s is a memorial to the Russian Victory over the Polish-Lithuanian army in 1812. (Kremlin link 1; Kremlin link 2)

Domodedovo airport	The Kremlin
Entrance to Red Square- Resurection Gate	Karl Marx
Bolshoi Theatre	Outside a restaurant
Plaque in front of the Iberian Chapel marking the Zero Kilometer for Russia’s highway system	Kazan Cathedral
State History Museum	Red Square
Gum Department Store	Gum Department Store
Gum Department Store	Gum Department Store
St. Basil’s Cathedral	St. Basil’s Cathedral
St. Basil’s Cathedral	St. Basil’s Cathedral
Kremlin wall	Kremlin - Spasskaya (Saviour’s) Tower
We walked beyond the square and over the bridge where Boris Nemtsov was shot on 2/27/15.  He was the rather popular leader of the opposition party.  There are pictures of him and flowers where he was killed.	Memorials to assassinated political leader Boris Nemtsov
Kotelnicheskaya Embankment building - one of seven Stalinist skyscrapers	Artwork outside Red Square

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