Moscow Walking Tour

Moscow Walking Tour

Moscow, Russia, Asia

I was absolutely exhausted last night, and my hotel room worked a treat for that. I have the smallest room ever created, but it still has all the amenities that I could ask for. The strangest thing about the room is that it’s an internal room, without a window. After I uploaded my blog I passed out and didn’t wake up until 8:45am. It was awesome!

I had breakfast at the hotel which was the first cooked breakfast of eggs and sausage that I’ve had in ages. I went out to meet up with a free walking tour that started at 10:45am right near my hotel. Our tour guide was named Elena and she was very good. Her English was perfect, and actually made the tour interesting. There were about 25 of us, and it was a pretty decent group. Everyone was much more enthusiastic than the group in Budapest had been. The tour was a great way to see the city and get an idea of what was built, when, and why.

We checked out some of the beautiful churches that are dotted around the city (there are over 600 churches in Moscow), went to the fanciest shopping mall I’ve ever seen, and finished in the Red Square and Kremlin. She told us a little bit about the celebration yesterday on 9 May, when Russia won the Great Patriotic War in 1945 (yup, that’s what they call WWII). In the mall I tried a traditional Russian drink called Kvass, which is a brown liquid made of rye. It was pretty gross. It looked like a dark ale, and tasted a bit like beer, but with no alcohol.

We got a really nice day where it was sunny, but not too hot, just comfortable. After the tour finished I walked around the city for a bit, got a bite to eat in a massive food court and then came back to the hotel to rest my legs. With all the walking I’m doing every day, I’m noticing that my knees are getting swelled up.

I rested for a couple hours and then went out to Arbat Street. This is a main pedestrian walkway in Moscow and it has hundreds of shops and restaurants on it. I was surprised to see how many American restaurants there were, especially ones I’ve never seen outside the US before. There aws Wetzel’s Pretzels, Dunkin Donuts, Wendy’s, Cinnabon, Auntie Anne’s, Subway, Johnny Rockets, Krispy Kreme, and Sbarros. After being communist for so long, they have really learned to embrace the capitalist lifestyle.

It was much more comfortable walking the streets today compared to yesterday. There were fewer people out than there were during the celebration, but the biggest difference was the lack of police today. For some reason, there were a lot fewer police on the streets, but it was much more comfortable. I had read a lot about the police here being very corrupt, so seeing them all over the place yesterday was a bit intimidating.

I found the Hard Rock Cafe and enjoyed another good meal, but with a different Russian beer. I didn’t really enjoy the beer, but the chicken fajitas were awesome. I also chatted with the hostess, Molly, for a while and she does the same thing I do. Every city she is in that has a HRC, she visits it. It was pretty cool to meet someone else who has the same strange habit that I do.

I hung around at HRC until just after 10pm so I could go take some night pictures on my way back to the hotel. The only problem is that everything in this city is lit up so well, that it doesn’t actually look dark in the city. The sky has a kind of grey tint to it with all the ambient light. And say what you will about the government and people in this country, Moscow is a beautiful city. Tomorrow I’m going to go inside of a few of the churches and museums to see what they have to offer.

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