Moscow Metro - The Best and Chespest Way To Explore The World's Most Expensive City

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After my week break in Slovenia, I have finally made my way to Moscow, and I decided to stay in Moscow for 24 hours, before I make my way to Siberia

Arriving at Moscow's second largest Domodedovo Airport from Frankfurt was straight forward and easy, and I was so proud of myself that the passport that I am holding is actually one of the very few passport which do not required Visa in to Russia, the immigration process was perhaps too easy and straight forward, I was immediately given an Entry Permit, and there is full name in Cyrillic and required to keep with one's person all the time, and required to register with police within 72 hours, but similar to most CIS Countries, usually this should be done by your hotel staffs upon request.

Upon arrival at the Aeroexpress Station, I changed my US Dollars into Russian Roubles, a transcation delivered with the very smart and automatic exchange kiosk.

Getting into Moscow from Airport is also pretty easy and straight forward, but again, never cheap, the Russian made Aeroexpress, runs every 30 min, takes exactly 45 minutes between the Airport and Pavenlenskaya, where I can connect with their massive Metro System to any part within the city.

It was now time to tackle the Moscow metro system, the world's busiest, largest and best apparently, I quite like the system though. Unlike most Metro Systems in any cities in the world, Moscow Metro everything is in only one language - Russian, and this encourages all non-Russian travellers at least to learn and master a few letters of Cyrillic, to make your life in the station easier.

My first two hours in Moscow were spent on the train and Metro, complete with my heavy backpack, going around in circles from south to north on the train and metro, that was absolute Soviet experience and quite fun though.

The whole system works with more than 300 stations and still rapidly expanding every year. Few facts about Moscow Metro :
- 3rd largest after London and New York
- World's busiest, carrying 10 million passengers a day, more than the total number of London and Hong Kong.
- World's deepest, and they designed that was the precaution of nuclear bombs and used air raids shelters during the cold war.

Most of the stations were built duing the Stalin's era, and the design of each station is vary from station to station, depending on the artist, time and materials they used, but I believe Stalin hired and invited the country's top and most famous artist and achitects, to design these stations. Most famous and well known design stations are within the Circle Line (Brown Line), and the materials the used including stained glasses and marbles. The design theme is also the best example and reflection of the happy era during the Soviet time.

Each ticket costs 28 Rubles, that's around 0.8 US Cents, and you have no time limit and with this ticket, you can travel as long as you like, just make sure you don't leave the metal gate so with one ticket, it was so convenient and cheap to do this metro tour since the trains come so every 3 minutes, I just hopped off and on at each station, walked around for few minutes, taking pictures and admiring all the artwork, design, and then jumped on one of the next trains to continue on to the next awesome stop. Metro tour is one of the must do activity for most travellers in Moscow, and you can't miss it.

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Comments

[Aun]

Hi,P'Tee
Thai also no need visa to Russia,That's good for me :D , Do u think there is easy to travel alone or not? Some of my friends not recommend to come here.They said it's a dangerous city. but i think they like Thai.I plan to go there wiz Guay and Poppy any suggestion?