DAY 158 THURSDAY AUGUST 30 TRANS-SIBERIAN TRAIN

The rain stopped but it was cool and windy. We walked through the Expo Centre again. They had a monorail taking people to the Amusement Park.

And we passed throught this gate with an unidentified statue.

There were 16 pavilions, representing the countries in the former USSR.  We saw the Communication Tower in the distance which is no doubt famous.

There was an old aeroplane and a space rocket.

One of the pavilions had a large stained glass window which was quite beautiful but neglected.

The whole area was being prepared for Moscow's birthday party on Saturday, September 1.  A very long tent had been erected and when we looked inside it appeared to be like the festival in Helsinki with a hundred little stalls, but they were not selling food; rather they had Russian goods of all kinds, especially clothing.

Coming back we saw a picture of the fountains in action taken from the air.

Then we came up to the fountain and found it had just been turned on.

 The golden statues of women represented the 16 Soviet Countries.  On the way back to the hotel we saw lines of older women holding up hangers with home-made clothing for sale.

We packed up and checked out at 12 noon and left Ken in the lobby with the luggage while we three took another walk around a residential area.  Apartments facing west can get hot in summer so many had put aluminium foil across their windows.

In the hotel car park we found a dozen or more stretch limos including some Hummers. They must be popular for special events.
At 2.40pm our guide Tanya arrived with a minibus driver and escorted us to the Kazansky Station, which was quite crowded even though it had only 6 platforms.

A locomotive arrived with our train 60 behind.

We walked along the platform, excited to be setting off on a 9000 km journey.

We got past the ticket lady.

and settled into our large two berth cabin.

We were given a box each containing numerous items, some of which were of the "suck it and see" variety. We worked out it contained a yoghurt bucket, 2 small chocolate bars, one tea bag, sugar, salt, pepper, ketchup and 2 sachets of mustard.  There is a restaurant car but the menu is pot luck to us.  We did bring some food with us.  There are two nice toilets at one end of the carriage and boiling water on tap at the other.  No showers.  The train took off at 4.50pm and after leaving Moscow we passed through forest most of the time. At a station called Vekovka which we reached at 9pm, hawkers were selling cakes, crystal glasses, chandeliers, a stuffed hawk and mongoose and many small trinkets.  This train was not going through Siberia, thus most of the passengers were travelling home to towns like Yekaterinburg. We pulled down our beds and had a comfortable night.  Much more so than the couchettes we have had previously.  

DAY 157 WEDNESDAY AUGUST 29 DANCE SPECTACULAR

I t rained nonstop all day so we took a day off from sightseeing.  Last night we had dinner overlooking the hotel lobby and Lyn had Beef Stroganoff and Malcolm had Chicken a la Kiev, both excellent. We will go there again tonight to celebrate our free tickets to the show, courtesy of Real Russia.  Lyn wandered through the many souvenir shops off the lobby and Malcolm used the Wifi.  We managed to get more smiles from the staff today; they are all very intense.  The show was terrific. It is staged by the Russian National Ballet every night from June to September.  There was an audience of 800 plus in the hotel theatre and lasted two hours.  The costumes (500) were beautiful,  the dancing was complex, energetic and absolutely synchronised.  No surprise which country won the Olympic Synchronised Swimming.  Serendipity that we were in this hotel and were able to see it, but nothing left to chance in this performance.  It was an unforgettable night of world class entertainment. And only $20 for the DVD to relive it.

Photos taken from the promotion video in the lobby.

DAY 156 TUESDAY AUGUST 28 OLGA OUR GUIDE

After the anxiety of yesterday we started the day in an apprehensive state of mind.  We went to breakfast at 8.30 and after searching around, found two places in a room which had a thousand plus chairs set up.  The breakfast buffet had quite a reasonable selection of food so we ate well.  We wondered why we could not find Pam and Ken in the room and found out later that they had been directed to another breakfast room upstairs, not quite as big. The size of the Hotel Cosmos takes some comprehending.  There are 83 bedrooms on our floor and there are 25 stories in all.  Perhaps there are as many as 3000 guests at a time.  It is probably designed on the same lines as a massive ocean cruiser.

It seems that the French government presented Russia with a statue of General de Gaulle and they placed it in the courtyard here.

 He was always above everyone else, looking down his nose at us. We waited in the lobby and our guide turned up at 10am on schedule, with a placard containing all four names.  She introduced herself as Olga and was a recent graduate linguist teaching French and English, so she was glad to spend the day with us conversing in English and translating Russian signs for us.  She took us to many different spots around Moscow and you might look at these photos and guess what they have in common as to their location.

This is a ceramic mosaic in the ceiling. One of many.

This is one of about 30 statues in this hall.

This hall had all marble walls, granite floors, chandeliers, elaborate ceiling paintings.

Dozens of these fancy light fittings in another hall.

Murals at each end of this hall.

Dozens of stained glass windows in this hall. Here is a final clue from the names on the walls of these locations.

In one hall there were displays of stuffed animals and models of animals from around the world. These included a frillnecked lizard and a Tassie Tiger.

 One hall was on a bridge in the middle of the Moskva River with a road running above it.

We returned to some of the halls as we moved around Moscow.  Final clue if you have not guessed.

The Moscow Metro carries 8 million passengers every weekday, more than Paris and London.  The trains are very quick and are never more than 3 monutes apart.  The stations are breathtakingly beautiful.  Other places we visited were the Kremlin and Red Square, which was almost deserted because of the rain. A band were practising the 1812 0verture inside a tent so we could not see them but it was appropriate music to accompany our walk starting from 0km

across the square towards St Basil's.

Opposite the Kremlin is a huge capitalist style shopping centre with artificial trees and fountains.

and outdoor cafes indoors

The bike shop had a display right along the hall but there are few places to ride safely in Moscow.

 Olga took us down Arbut St and into a souvenir shop, and we had lunch at a Russian Pancake Shop. We saw Puskin and his wife's Statue and Turandot in gold.

.

We visited the Exhibition Centre in the rain and finished the day there because it was near the Cosmos Hotel.  We will be back to the Exhibition Centre on Thursday so more about it then. We received an email from Igor saying we would receive a refund of $300 for the missed transfers in St Petersburg and Real Russia would pay $50 each for us to see the Dance Spectacular in the Hotel Theatre on Wenesday night as compensation.  He is back in the good books now.

DAY 155 MONDAY AUGUST 27 MOSCOW

Had an easy morning and packed up ready for transfer to the St Petersburg Station at 12 noon. While waiting in the lobby a large painting on the wall showed us that St Petersburg also has a mermaid even though the river (Neva) is fresh water.

 At 12.15 we had no van so Pam swung into action again giving the rounds of the table to Real Russia. Our promised van would not be coming they told us, so please call a taxi.  Eventually a small taxi (no meter, no taxi signs) arrived at 12.50 and we piled in.  Our train was due to leave at 1.30.  The driver said "10 minutes".  At 1.15 we were stop/start in thick traffic and he said "five minutes".  When the Station came in view the square in front of it was completely full of vehicles inching along.  The driver did a good job of forcing his way through and we climbed out at 1.25, thinking "lost cause".  We all ran the 100 metres through the station to the platform entrance where people were putting bags through the Xray conveyor.  Pam sprinted straight through past the security and found a train guard ready to close the doors.  She held them up while we all arrived and the train departed 30 seconds after we got on.  Bevan would have been proud of us.  We found our four seats arranged around a table and had a very good trip of four and a half hours at 200 km/hr.  They served us the best meal we have yet had on a train.  Three courses,  two rounds of drinks and tea/coffee.

Looking out of the window we saw mainly forest and the occasional village flashing past.

As we were getting close to Moscow we saw many high-rise apartment blocks, some, like this one, quite decent.

We got off the train and immediately found our driver with his sign.  We followed him for 10 minutes to the old Mercedes minibus and he delivered us carefully to our hotel at 7pm.  The staff here are unfriendly, particularly the security ones.  The Wifi is only available in the lobby.  It costs $25 for 3 hours if you want to have it in your room.  More about the hotel tomorrow.

DAY 154 SUNDAY AUGUST 26 ST PETERSBURG.

After the shemozzle last night the Moscow Company responsible was very apologetic and anxious to convince us that everything was going to be O.K. from now on.  They certainly gave a bad first impression, but Pam reminded us that Real Russia in London had warned us in advance that many aspects of Russian Tourism were still in the developmental stage and things might go awry.  Katia, our guide for the day, arrived promptly at 9.50am with the promised sign "Pam Bradley+3" , ready to take us on a 7 hour tour of the city.  She apologised and delivered a bottle of champagne as "compensation".  She handed us our train tickets to Moscow and from there to Ulan Battor. We received an SMS today assuring us that the remaining tickets would come as we proceeded.  We felt reassured and climbed into a modern VW 9seater people mover as we were introduced to our driver, Alexander.  One driver, one fluent English local guide with 4 tourists worked very well all day.  Some cruise ship people from Wales told us they were jealous of our arrangement.  As we crossed over the river towards the monuments, the first building Katia pointed out was the former KGB building.  It was screened behind scaffolding and we wondered if it was going to stay that way.

They have been replaced with the Federal Security Police, she told us.  We saw many old ships as we drove along the river, this pretty one now a restaurant.

We passed the Hermitage, which we did not expect to touch on a one day visit.

And we saw the Peter and Paul Fortress across on the island.

Then the St Isaac Cathedral in the distance.

This was one of Katia's favourites and we climbed out of the van amid the big coaches and felt some of the 17 metre long marble columns.  There were over 80 of them used in the building.

They were sitting in a metal sleeve which appeared to be solid copper.  The building was next to a canal and our van was parked on a bridge that was 99 metres wide. The footings for the marshy foundations consisted of many hundreds of long pylons. This is a picture of our guide and driver.

Katia showed us the mark on an obelisk that corresponded to the level of water when most of the city was flooded in 1824. See the black line?

The columns weighed 114 tonnes each  and were lifted in place by human power using scaffolding and pulleys as illustrated by a model inside.

The doors weighed 7 tonnes each being made of iron and finished inside with scenes from the life of St Isaac of Dalmatia, who was Peter the Great's favourite.

It was designed by a French Architect who wanted to be buried in it but was Catholic and it was not allowed. A scale model was placed in 2008. This was the third church to be built .

 The dome was 101 metres high and the dove at the zenith is one metre wide.

It is the fourth largest dome church in Europe after London, Rome and Florence.  Particularly striking were these columns covered in lapis laeszulai(?) green stone. In the chapel nearby an orthodox service was in progress and the singing of the choir was again heavenly but no cameras were allowed. I did get a sound recording however.  Some of the icons were copied onto the walls with ceramic tiles and this process often took many years as they used 12000 different colours of tiles.

Here is a detail from the above.

This was the size of this church:

And this is the man who inspired it all and still inspires many people here. Peter the Great.

We took 70 photos today and looked at about six monuments.  We were tired by 5pm and we suspect you would be just as overloaded if we put them all here.  We visited the Peter and Paul Fortress next and spent quite a bit of time there. We went into the prison past the vintage guard,

and found the cells once occupied by famous revolutionaries as this was a political prison.  One cell was occupied by Maxim Gorky, the author.

They were kept solitary but communicated by a tapping alphabet code.  We had Russian pies for lunch near this circular building which had a panorama on its scaffolding screen.

Then we visited "St Saviour's of the spilt blood" which was very colourful and in the style of St Basil's in Moscow.

Too big to fit in one shot.  That's enough churches for the blog today.  Everywhere we went there were couples in costumes offering photo opps. Sneaked these photos without paying.

And couples getting married for real on a Sunday.

Has something upset mother-in-law?

 Of course we had to finish the day at the largest Souvenir Shop, specialising in Faberge eggs. Bought an egg but not a babushka.