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Published: September 18th 2008
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Moscow
The street where I got lost at midnight, you can't quite see the McDonalds where I rang for help I arrived in Moscow at 8.30 Wednesday night (Russian time). Ill not go into the full details here but I had an awful time getting to the hostel. It took me 4 and a half hours. I was put on the wrong train at the airport, didn’t know where to get off (couldn see any signs let alone read them), had help from a lovely Russian couple who took me from the train to the metro and put me on the right train, got off the train to realise I had lost the voucher for the hotel (which had the address and directions in Russian - if you don present the voucher they are under no obligation to give you the reserved room). So I was kinda lost and knew even if I did find it I might be refused! Arrgggh! It was 11.30 by this time and the rucksack was feeling very heavy now. I headed up the street I thought was right only to find that most of the side streets didn have any street signs on them....things were looking pretty dark by this time.
Luckily a McDonalds was open so I nipped in to re-evaluate. I tried
to find the info on my phone using wi-fi (I think the 3 mins will have cost about 30 quid). No luck, so I phoned Catriona. She was amazing and texted me back the full directions and address. Unfortunatley this turned out to be little help after all, as I walked on and still didn see any street that looked remotely like the name. The direcions Catriona had texted were in English and of the few streets that did have signs, they were written in Cyrillic. Asked a RAC type man...even showed him the address..no luck, asked in a local deli...no luck. Went back out onto the street (1am by now) and a lovely Russian girl asked if I needed help. She looked at the address and said she lived in the same block! Yahoo! I was soooooooo relieved. She even took me to the front door then went on upstairs.
Nobody answered at the flat.
I had a sinking feeling Id be spending the night on the stairs (believe it or not I was tired enough to sleep). As a last resort I went back downstairs and rang the buzzer.....and a man answered and told me to
Moscow - Red Square
This is now a posh shopping mall but was once famous for food queues come up! Relief wasn the word. The place is small and very old fashioned but clean (and they have a long haired black and white cat called Basil who likes to stay in the dorm!). It was the best night’s sleep Ive ever had.
I had a much better day today. The hostel is very close to the city centre and is only a 10 minute walk from Red Square. St Basils Cathedral was very impressive. It almost looks Disney-esque. Its not like a European Cathedral - one vast space inside - but is a series of small chapels inside, all very ornate and gilded within an inch of their life. Gillian you would have loved the tiny passage ways and steep stairs. Every inch of the interior was decorated with painted plasterwork. It was beautiful.
Unfortunately I was too late to see Lenins tomb and the Kremlin as they are closed on Thursdays but Ill do that tomorrow. I then had a wander around and went to a little museum in a house that the Romanovs had lived in. I stopped for a lovely coke in a very posh shopping mall (everything from Louis Vitton to Accessorise).
Isn it wonderful that coke is the same in every language!
Went out for dinner to My My (Moo Moo) with a Thai girl from the hostel. All Russian food and self service so my pointing skills were called for. It was very nice.
Not sure when I can blog again. Getting the plane to Irkutsk tomorrow night, I have the day and a night there then the tour group picks me up from the hostel in the morning to join the tour.
(will figure out how to load pics later...too tired)
[The trip got off to a pretty bad start. Even before I left the UK my visas were late and I had to change my flights to Moscow and arrange to meet the Trans-Mongolian tour I had booked further on in Irkutsk. I arrived in Moscow on the night that the tour group left for the tour. There was no way I could’ve got a connection to make the start of the trip so I had booked an internal flight to Irkutsk to catch up the tour party. I was actually delighted not to have missed seeing Moscow as I’d always wanted to go.
The Kremlin wasn’t what I had expected at all. I just assumed it would be government buildings behind the famous red wall but it turns out that the real draw was the cluster of ornate churches around a small square. Each of them was different but they all had magnificent gilding and ornamentation. The weather was pretty cold but I was delighted to be finally on my way. I felt that if I could cope with being lost in Moscow at midnight on my first night of my round the world trip then I could cope with anything that was to come.]
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Marcello
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Hey!!!!
Brilliant!!!!! Sounds like the obligatory eary trip 'getting lost' disaster is out of the way!!! and that you are having an amazing time!! Keep up the blogging... look forward to reading more about your adventures...