Rooftop bar
After our big breakfast and lunch we resisted having dinner and went up to the rooftop bar at the nearby Ritz-Carlton hotel instead. ($75 for four glasses of wine, about what we expected) It was cold and blankets were supplied, but the view was rewarding. Svetlana told us that in the 50's Stalin wanted to modernise the city, so he put each of the seven Politburo heads in charge of building a sky scraper. These are dotted around the capital. That's one, resembling the Empire State Building, faintly visible on the left skyline. If you zoom in you'll see Lenin's Tomb, at the end of the central road leading into Red Square.
Founded in the 12th century, the Principality of Muscovy, was able to emerge from over 200 years of Mongol domination (13th-15th centuries) and to gradually conquer and absorb surrounding principalities. In the early 17th century, a new Romanov Dynas... ... read more 
