Russia - Don't Take the Metro at Rush Hour

We woke up this morning bright and early ready to check out Moscow and everything it had to offer. Now that we had our metro tickets and new roughly how to get to the Red Square, we headed off. I remember reading in the Lonely Planet that taking the metro during rush hour was not recommended, however we had no idea how bad an idea this was. We barely made it through the doors but had nothing to hold on to. Turns out, handrails aren't that important at rush hour because we were packed so tight that there was no where to fall. The worst part was the rush of people getting off and on at each station... I was sure that one of us was going to get pushed out and we would be split up.

Fortunately, we made it in one piece to our station. We decided to try a new route to the Red Square today, which was another bad idea. This time, instead of following onion domes to our destination, we followed the people. Too bad they didn't work at the Kremlin because they did not lead us to the Red Square.

Once we did finally make it to the Red Square we went in search of breakfast and more importantly, coffee. Turns out Russians like to eat at home. We finally found a 24 hour cafe. No one there spoke english but we somehow managed to order a cup of coffee. Except it was espresso, but not. Espresso was on the menu so we tried something else that we hoped was just coffee. It was strong and bitter, but at least it was chalk full of caffeine.

We found a bakery nearby for a little sustanance before heading to the Kremlin. We bought our tickets for the Armory and headed right in. The Armory was actually used to build arms and had a large amount of armory and weapons on display. This was not mentioned in either of our tour books, they preferred to describe the jewels and fabrege eggs on display.

Apparently during the time that we were in the Armory, the tour buses must have arrived because it took another hour to buy our tickets and enter the Kremlin. The Kremlin is made up of a number of office buildings surrounding 6 or 7 magnificent onion-domed cathedrals. Are tickets granted us entry into a few of them. The Archangle Cathedral was filled to the brim with coffins. Our tour through it was accompanied by the singing of a small choir. The music made for a perfect soundtrack to our tour, but it was a bit strange to see the women dressed in very propper Orthodox clothing but wearing leopard print scraves on their heads.

We spend the rest of the day meandering through the Kremlin, Red Square and adjacent area.