March, march, march across Red Square*

On my last day in Moscow I had a little bit of free time before heading off to the airport so I made the trek though the falling snow to Red Square to see the must-see things, such as Saint Basil's Cathedral pictured here.

Not surprisingly there are several majestic buildings in and around Red Square and you can see these in my Facebook photo album, but I found Red Square itself a little disappointing. This may be because it was wet and grey and cold but the gaudy temporary ice rink also had something to do with it!

For me, the highlight of Moscow was the pedestrianised Arbat Street which starts from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Being pedestrianised is a real plus as most of Moscow is dominated by the motor car which makes getting anywhere above ground really quite difficult and noisy. And the street has numerous attractions including market stalls, statues, restaurants and artwork in the paving. It's a great place for a leisurely stroll, which I did three times in three days :-)

* The title comes courtesy of the Human League's The Things That Dreams Are Made Of (from the excellent Dare album) which I could not get out of my head once the lyrical connection had been made.

A quick view of Moscow

After being here for the best part of three days I finally manged to get some time to walk around outside while it was not that wet or that dark.

My photographs on Facebook give an overall view of what I saw but this is the stand-out building so far, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Other major buildings have the same basic look, a cross between Lego (shape) and Gothic (finish). And it works; the buildings look majestic from a distance and from close-up.

I hope to be able to do a bit more exploring tomorrow (and thanks to fellow SAHB fan Andrey for some advice on this) but the weather forecast is snow so this coule be bit of a challenge!

Welcome to Moscow!

The trip to Moscow today went pretty well overall but was not without its moments.

The flight was fine (just over 3 hours) and I was able to catch up with some podcasts including some videos that I watched on my iPod touch.

Domodedovo Airport was interesting! Immigration was faster than I expected and there were no problems with my bag (for a change).

On exit I was confronted by a horde of taxi drivers wearing the same I-am-a-gangster black jackets that they wear in Kiev and, presumably, in many other places in Eastern Europe. Managed to negotiate these and found a working ATM soon after then got an official taxi at a bearable price.. Definitely on a roll at this point.

The exit from the airport was rather tortuous and involved walking all the way through the brand new departures hall and then taking various passageways through building works that looked just like the sort of place that Jack the Ripper would have felt at home in. Once I got outside the airport I was confronted by the view above and a long trek to where the taxi was parked.

The drive to the hotel took just over an hour and we must have changed lanes on average twice a minute. But we got here OK and now I am getting used to losing three hours from the day and ready for work tomorrow.