The Gluten Free Travel Blog

Moscow is really great. I have to start any post about this place with that simple fact. It is just a really, really, really beautiful city. After two days of traveling to get here from San Francisco, I arrived in the morning and made a day of Moscow. Starting with Red Square, I took in the buildings and tried to read up on the history of each one (each building has about a chapter of information on it alone). The thing that strikes me as most remarkable, it the length of the history, and how well it is preserved. Having lived in Belgium, I thought I knew old buildings, but some of these buildings are 600-700 years old, and they are perfectly preserved. Even though Moscow was bombed during WWII, apparently they missed everything of interest while bombing. I don’t have access to uploading pictures right now, but google St. Basil’s Cathedral and you’ll know what I’m talking about (yes, it is the building from the level 100 screen in Tetris). It’s not a cheap city, but you can get by reasonably with a little effort.

Today I set out to see the Kremlin and the Russian version of the Crown Jewels. It was amazing to see all the Russian Orthodox churches, all within one compound, each one service a different purpose (weddings, coronations, etc.). The experience was filled with the never ending experience of waiting in line, but it was totally worth the wait.

Patience is the best advice for traveling in Russia. The people are so friendly, and very helpful, but everything takes longer than it seemingly should. Budget a lot of time for waiting and you’ll get the most out of the trip. If you plan to see everything in one day, you will be swearing at the traffic jam your taxi seems to never fail to find. So far, so good. Hopefully I’ll be able to post some of these pictures soon. Wifi seems to be lacking.

PICTURE UPDATE:

Tags: Moscow, St. Basil's

This entry was posted on April 3, 2011 at 08:23 and is filed under Russia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.