Well, we arrived in Moscow at 10:00 AM with big plans to make use of the day. However, the kids sitting in the rows around us had other plans. They proceeded to spend the entire time on the airplane kicking and grabbing our seats, yelling, laughing and screaming. It did not make for good sleeping. As a result, by the time we checked in to our hotel room, neither Jenny nor I had the energy to do anything but sleep.
Around 6:00 PM we roused from our naps and decided to find our way to the Red Square. Turns out, not a whole lot of people know how to speak english here in Russia... After attempting on our own to purchase Metro tickets and failing big time, we sought the help of a friendly english-speaking Russian. It took a few tries before a woman took pity on us and helped us, but not without laughing at us for trying to get by without knowing any Russian.
Once we bought our tickets and figured out how to use them, we descended the longest, steepest escalator into the center of the earth where the trains are located. Apparently the metro was designed to double as a bomb shelter which is supposed to explain the depth. It took us a few minutes to match the Cyrillic characters on the signs to those on the map to determine which train and direction we were looking for. Once on the train, we needed to pay special attention to how many stops we made to figure out when to get off because there was know way we were going to be able to match the announcement to the names of the stops since we did not know what they sounded like.
Once we got off the metro, finding the Red Square was another adventure. Everytime we saw a building with an onion dome, we headed toward it. Unfortunately every other building seemed to have one. But finally we saw a multi-colored, Disneyland-esque dome and knew we were finally heading the right direction. We finally made it! After taking a significant number of pictures (I hope to post some soon) we went in search of food. The first few places we saw, TGI Fridays, McDonnalds, and Sbarro's were out of the question, but we eventually found a food court where we managed to point and smile our way to an interesting dinner of oily potato with stroganov (me) or stew (jenny) on top. Then it was back to the hotel for a good night's sleep.
Around 6:00 PM we roused from our naps and decided to find our way to the Red Square. Turns out, not a whole lot of people know how to speak english here in Russia... After attempting on our own to purchase Metro tickets and failing big time, we sought the help of a friendly english-speaking Russian. It took a few tries before a woman took pity on us and helped us, but not without laughing at us for trying to get by without knowing any Russian.
Once we bought our tickets and figured out how to use them, we descended the longest, steepest escalator into the center of the earth where the trains are located. Apparently the metro was designed to double as a bomb shelter which is supposed to explain the depth. It took us a few minutes to match the Cyrillic characters on the signs to those on the map to determine which train and direction we were looking for. Once on the train, we needed to pay special attention to how many stops we made to figure out when to get off because there was know way we were going to be able to match the announcement to the names of the stops since we did not know what they sounded like.
Once we got off the metro, finding the Red Square was another adventure. Everytime we saw a building with an onion dome, we headed toward it. Unfortunately every other building seemed to have one. But finally we saw a multi-colored, Disneyland-esque dome and knew we were finally heading the right direction. We finally made it! After taking a significant number of pictures (I hope to post some soon) we went in search of food. The first few places we saw, TGI Fridays, McDonnalds, and Sbarro's were out of the question, but we eventually found a food court where we managed to point and smile our way to an interesting dinner of oily potato with stroganov (me) or stew (jenny) on top. Then it was back to the hotel for a good night's sleep.
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