Moscow - Part 4

Thursday, 21 April 2016, 7.30 pm

And finally, the Red Square! Here you can find most of the tourist attractions - the Kremlin, St Basil's Cathedral, Lenin's Mausoleum, Kazan Cathedral (to honour the expulsion of the Poles from Moscow) and the State Historical Museum.

It was late evening, and the wind was really cold but that didn't stop me from taking photographs, especially of St Basil's Cathedral. What a lovely, lovely sight. Quite a number of people wanted to take pictures with me, too. I think it's because I'm dark skinned and there's not many people of colour here. We're a rarity.

Oh and I figured out what was wrong with the scenery in Moscow. There is no green. It was the end of winter beginning of spring, so it is to be expected, but coming from a tropical country, I'm really not used to the lack of greenery. To the overall lack of colour here.

As it was getting windier and therefore colder, we went into the GUM Department Store. Thank God it was warm inside.

Bridged with metal and glass vaults, it has a steel frame with glass roof. The entire Red Square used to be a huge market place, but then the government decided to clean up the place and organise proper shop buildings. Hence the GUM Department Store was built, it is one of the largest and oldest department stores in Russia. 

It is really big and I suspect we only walked 10% of the area inside. You can find many of the luxury brands in here, I didn't see that many shoppers (not like our malls in Malaysia!) but maybe because it was a working day and I did hear that the things here were more expensive than usual as it was a well known tourist attraction.

We ate at the food court - traditional Russian food! For salad I had 'herring under a coat' (what a cute name!) which consist of layers of herring, potato, onion, egg, beetroot and topped with mayonnaise (the coat). For main I had chicken Kiev with rice and a kind of mushroom cheese sauce which was delicious! Also ate a traditional bun filled with chicken, onion, potato and egg filling. Not bad. Dessert is another traditional Russian dish called kartoshka, something chocolatey.

After dinner we walked around in the supermarket and I bought some Russian chocolates which I was told was very good.

And then the metro back to the hotel.