Hello!
It is time for me to talk to you a bit about Russia’s famous capital: Moscow. I had the chance to stay there with my friend Hadrien’s great-aunt Maricha, who is an extremely kind and generous woman. She grew up in France before she moved to Russia, many years ago, and she has travelled a lot in her life, so we had many stories to share to each other. She lives in an area about 40 minutes away from the center (by subway), full of many communist buildings of that type, like you can see in any big agglomeration here:
So after finding her place (not such an easy affair) and settling in, I went to explore the city…
I started by going to the Tretiakov art gallery, very nice! It was much smaller than the Hermitage, which made me actually appreciate it a lot more…
Passed the statue of Peter the Great…
And arrived in Isskoustv Park, which looked like a cemetery of statues…
I continued to enjoy the nice sights of Moscow’s riverside.
That evening, I was supposed to meet Ekaterina, Trevor’s friend, that I met in Tallinn. I had some time to kill so I was walking around when two young Russians in front of a bar invited me to come and have a beer with them. It was so nice of them, we had a great time! The girl explained to me that in the neighborhood where I was staying, there was a maniac a few years ago who took his victims to the forest nearby to kill them, and they discovered more than 30 bodies there… Brrrrr. Later, I went to find the place where Ekaterina told me to meet, but I looked everywhere and didn’t find it. Of course, my phone chose that moment to die so after searching for more than an hour, I gave up, and decided to go back. By the time my metro arrived near Maricha’s place, it was after midnight, and I still had to walk for another 15 minutes. There was almost no one there except dodgy people, I couldn’t stop thinking about that maniac story… But I got home safe, where Maricha was waiting for me with a very nice meal she had prepared 🙂
The next day was even better. I went to the Pouchkine museum first, and it was one of the most beautiful museums I’ve ever been to!
There it is!!
It started raining like crazy, but it didn’t keep me from admiring the nice buldings, hidden under the few leaves of my little tree… 🙂
I then hid inside the apartment of Boulgakov, the famous writer of “The Master and Margarita”, that everybody knows here!
When the rain stopped, I walked to the street Arbat, probably the most famous (and touristic) street of the city.
(Sorry for the blurry photo, it’s the only one I have)
On the next day, I went back near the Red Square, this time to go inside the Kremlin.
It was nothing special at all, there were a few nice churches and administrative buildings, definitely not worth the super expensive price I paid to get in… But there were nice gardens and a cool canon so I felt a bit better 🙂
Back to the Red Square, I enjoyed the view of St-Basil’s Cathedral one more time (I have been dreaming of seeing it for real for years):
And then admired the mausoleum of the father of the revolution for a while:
I met a Syrian guy, he was very nice and I think he was happy to find someone to talk to (although the translator on his phone did most of the work), so we walk around together for a bit.
In the end, he gave me a little present, saying: “That way you’ll remember me.” People are so nice to me, I can’t believe it! Thank you!
I went back and took the metro for one of the last times, the station are all so pretty there:
See the sign on the top right? That’s why I am VERY happy I’ve learned the cyrillic alphabet 😛
And that’s it! I left early in the morning the next day, after spending my last moments with Maricha, off to the bus station, next destination: Souzdal!
A lot of people say St-Petersburg is better than Moscow, but I really preferred Moscow, for it’s wonderful sights and architecture. But I was happy to leave the big cities and mass tourism and to go deeper into that huge country… I’ll tell you all about it as soon as possible!
Xoxoxo