Saturday, September 3, 2011

Red Square trips


On June 9th we first visited Red Square.  It is right in the heart of Moscow, and is a pretty amazing site.  Just walking through the Resurection Gate will take your breath away.  Kala's father Bill flew in from Beijing, China to visit for a few days and brought us there for our first visit.  There we visited the G.U.M. department store and St. Basil's Cathedral which was built in 1557 by Ivan the Terrible.  The G.U.M., or state department store, there are many stores which are very expensive.  The only thing we bought from there were a couple of cheese muffins which I believe cost somewhere in the nieghborhood of $10.  Here in Red Square or Krasnaya Ploshchad is where you will go for many events ranging from concerts and races to parades and political rallies.

The second time we went to Red Square was when we attempted to attend the Moscow City Racing event.  We had won a pair of tickets valued at 12,000 rubles a piece!  That equates to about $400.00 U.S.  They were VIP tickets so we were excited to go.  We went with Walter and Phyllis and Pat and Dan two couples we work with at the embassy who had also won tickets.  It had been raining that morning, but we decided to attempt it anyways.  Needless to say it was a disaster.  We walked all around downtown through Red Square trying to find out where the VIP section was.  We had asked many Russian's who were working the event where the VIP section was and they all pointed us in a different direction.  By the time we finally found where we needed to be we discovered that the VIP section was not catered like we thought...there was only a free beer tent (which us guys stayed at) and a crowded bleecher section.  To top it off the event didn't actually have any real racing, just a few formula 1 cars that would do time trials every 20 minutes or so.  After living in Russia for 6 months I have discovered that you really shouldn't expect much here, and don't believe everything you read on paper.

In the winter we plan on visiting the armory, museum, Gagarin's grave (which is in the wall itself), and Lenin's tomb where you can see his preserved body. We will also have to visit the Kremlin and the I want to visit all of the towers of the wall.

Anyways thats all I've got about Red Square for now, Do Svidaniya!

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