Moscow by day

Finally we come to what is likely to be the last entry for this trip as we start travelling home on Sunday - Moscow-Frankfurt-Singapore (overnight)-Brisbane (Monday night) and home on Tuesday. So today was a very busy day touring the major sights of Moscow... well, actually it was mainly The Kremlin and involved quite a lot walking, queuing and standing around but not allowed to take photos inside the buildings.

The Kremlin (which means fortress) is everything inside the Red wall. It's a city within a city and contains many churches, government offices including Mr Putin's, and the Armoury (treasurery). To enter the grounds there were security checks and no large backpacks permitted. There were guards that would blow a whistle at you if you walked on the road - you had to stay to the footpath. We visited another church (same old, same old), saw world's biggest cannon that has never been fired (probably too heavy to load the cannonballs), and a big bell that has never been rung because it had a crack in it when it was cast. The Armoury contained all the priceless objects from ceremonial garments, royal coaches, jewels and Faberge eggs (i really liked those) . We explored Red Square and the GUM department store... tried their world famous GUM icecream (very nice). Took photos of St Basil's Basilica with its colourful domes.

Moscow itself is quite a green city with many parks and open spaces but they seem to think dandelions are a beautiful flower and leave them to flourish everywhere in the overlong grass. The traffic is horrible and is definitely not something English speaking people should even attempt. Check out the last photo and see if you can decipher the road sign. As with our entire holiday, we were fortunate to have beautiful weather and that certainly helped with our enjoyment of the places we visited.Okumaya devam et