Moscow

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Knock, knock, knock! Knock, knock, knock! All to soon, the guard was running down the hall knocking on each cabin door, waking us for our approach to Moscow. The toilets empty directly on to the track. This kind of thing is not really all that neat, when you're in a train station, so they are closed half an hour before each station. We were woken with an hour to go, in case we had to... go. All along the side of the tracks were houses, I'll be the houses that are half an hour from Moscow station are pretty cheap.

Thankfully at the hotel we were told we could check in. Cheri (by virtue of not having to get her bag) was first in line, so we were soon having a proper sleep, waking at 11 to get ready for our walking tour of Moscow.

While it wasn't snowing today, there was a chill wind, so our 3 hour tour seemed very cold, especially straight after a warm room, bed and shower. We went into Red Square, took pictures of St Basils, GUM, Lenin's Tomb and the Kremlin.

Lenin wasn't in his tomb while we there, otherwise we might have gone to visit. I've always thought it suspicious that a guy could be so well enbalmed that he's shown no sign of wear or tear. Apparantly someone else thinks so too. So while he is away for his annual cleaning (sounds like Victorian times) he is also getting certified as being Lenin (and no, I have no idea how they're going to do that).

The tour ended in a food hall near Red Square. Strangely, for a city as large as Moscow, this food hall was the only place where we could eat reliably, so it was frequented by just about everyone on the tour for many meals over the next few days. As testament to this, that evening we wandered over half the city looking for food or at least a beer and in the end headed back to the hotel in defeat. The hotel directed us to anther hotel where we finally managed to get Beef Stroganov. Probably only because Alex showed up and joined us and the staff realized they'd have to give us Russian service rather than tourist fob off.

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