Day Trip to Moscow, Day 3

Train Ride

After getting to the train station with a very grumpy and rude Uber driver (who took my phone to put his own - undeserved- 5 star rating) we boarded the painfully early train to Moscow.  The "Sapsan" took us to Moscow in 4 hours going at a speed of up to 250 km/h.  Geo took a long nap to catch up on the sleep, I so meanly deprived him of by choosing an early train. I watched a show on my phone and then joined him for a short nap.

We arrived in Moscow a bit sleepy but ready to start the day.

In the Metro (Underground) Geo was still contemplating his life choices.

The Kremlin

Our first thing on the agenda was the Kremlin, as it requires a reasonable amount of time and is the main sight of Moscow. After seemingly and eternity in the line for the tickets, we made it inside.

We walked around inside, looking at the churches and cathedrals. Here are some pictures from the outside, as inside photography was prohibited.

This is Zsar Kolokol (Zsar Bell) according to the leaflet the biggest bell in the world. It weights 200 tonnes with the broken off piece weighting 10.

The police in the Kremlin was very vigilant and constantly blowing their whistles to direct people back on the pathways. Thankfully we were careful enough to not be whistled at! That ended our sightseeing inside the Kremlin and we exited onto the main square.

Our City Walk

Being quite hungry we continued on to lunch, and found ourselves in a chain restaurant with a cafeteria style food. Having selected our food we took our trays to a table and enjoyed a quick, cheap and simple lunch.

From there we started our (very long) walk around the city. Moscow is very grand and while planning our walk I underestimated the distance we were walking (oops). Google had said roughly an hour and a half, and with a whole day to spare I thought that it was very manageable (well then). In total we walked over 27 000 steps (that's 19 km) and I can tell you we were shattered. Anyways, we managed to visit all the main sights so here are the highlights:

Inside the main shopping mall GUM

This was the last place of the tour so energy was low

Evening

We still had several hours until our train back to Saint Petersburg, so we took the Metro to go see the modern business quarter of Moscow - Moscow City. After looking at the new skyscrapers we headed back to city centre and walked around the main touristy pedestrian street and watched some street artists to spend the time. Geo's favorite was a spray paint artist doing a live show, mine were a band consisting of a string quartet and a drummer. 

Lastly, we boarded the night train at 22.30. We shared a room with another couple who had booked the two top bunks. The beds were surprisingly comfortable and being so tired from the long day we slept through the night, and would have probably slept even longer if the lady wouldn't have woken us up as we were entering the train station in Saint Petersburg.

-KK