Blogs from Moscow, Northwest, Russia, Europe - page 11

Here it is...they call this a trip of a lifetime...how could we call ourselves travelers without having done it. Took a while to plan, took a while to ride...the memories will be with us...forever. First, we didn't ride the trans-Siberian, as this train is running from Moscow to Vladivostok. What we did is the trans-Manchurian, the train all the way from Moscow to Ulan Baator. We did it non-stop, this is a 100 hours ride...meaning 5 nights, four days as you board the train at around 9pm, and arrive in Ulan Baator early morning. You can either use a travel agent to buy the ticket ahead for you... or take your luck once you are in Russia. I was happy to have pre-booked our St Petersburg-Moscow...and the same will be later one for the leg Ulan ... read more

Today I spent my only full day in Moscow. I wish I had planned things better as 2 days in Moscow is certainly not enough. I went to Gorky park yesterday for about an hour but I honestly think I could have spent a week there. I would have stayed the rest of the evening but the girls I was with wanted to move straight on and since I had paid absolutely no attention to where the hostel was I figured I'd better stay with them. The park was reasonably non eventful due to it being mid week however there were still a number of local families and young people as well as tourists. I felt the park was a great reflection of the people in Russia today. There were stages throughout the park where on ... read more

When our feet needed a break, we ventured into the Moscow metro, built between 1947 and 1953 during Stalin’s ‘Soviet Time’. Many of the spacious and majestic stations are beautifully decorated with paintings, mosaics, stained glass and sculptures depicting all the good things about life in Russia: the industry, music, science, bountiful food, scholars, and general merry-making. A one-ride ticket costs less than $1 and we were the recipients of several acts of unsolicited friendliness as we found our way around. (I also had men offer me a welcome seat on several occasions.) This can be tricky as the station names are hard to spot from inside the cars and are difficult to recognize in the announcements as they don’t sound the way we might expect, however counting the number of stations we needed to pass ... read more

As we entered Moscow on the Moskava River, what surprised me most was the large number of modern high-rise apartment blocks under construction. These architecturally interesting and aesthetically pleasing structures are disbursed among the cold concrete-gray monotonous 8 to 10-story apartment blocks one associates with Soviet era social housing we have seen in other ex-soviet towns. Our guide tells us they are expensive, but as Moscow now has a large and growing economy, lots of people must be able to afford them. Judging by the large number of high-end European cars clogging the street, the guide is probably right. After Red Square and the Kremlin, the cold war skyline of Moscow was dominated by the iconic buildings, known as the Seven Sisters, that are located in prominent locations throughout Moscow. Our hotel room, faces the Ministry ... read more

Moscow - where to begin? Well, to start with, it is maybe worth pointing out that this is the capital city of the present-day Russian Federation, and the economic and political hub of the entirity of the former Soviet Union, so clearly the largest city located in the world's largest country is a prominent place for sure, and was worked into this traveller's ongoing itinerary. Moscow is an immense place for sure, and a city of superlatives, but sadly, those statistics also include those lesser attractive facts such as 'priciest city on the continent', and 'city with the world's highest average hotel room cost', so to combat the high costs potentially incurred, a hotel in a suburban location was booked, and I was determined to get my teeth into Moscow and see what it all entailed. ... read more