Day 63 - Plans A, B and C

Having already covered most of the “big ticket” items we wanted to see in Moscow, we decided to take today at an easier pace – after all this is meant to be about having a holiday too, not just about travelling. Thus after a sleep in, a late breakfast, and chatting for a while to a couple who have been seven months on the road out of Australia it was about noon before we headed out.

After getting some stamps at the Post Office we walked to the Museum of the Revolution, hoping to add some more recent history to our constant exposure to the history of Imperial Russia. Unfortunately we found out that museum contained very little information in English and a guided tour in English cost A$60 for a maximum of four people. Even if there has been two other people there willing to split the cost it just seemed way to extortionate, so we scrapped that idea and set our sights on Plan B.

Plan B was to go check out the Damslovsky Markets near Tverskoya station. It was a simple four stops on the metro from where we were, although the last stop seemed to be especially long even by Russian standards. We were distracted for a while checking out the big shopping centre when we got there before we went looking for the Markets. The sad news there was that despite looking all around the monastery that the markets were supposed to be behind we couldn’t find them anywhere. (Though we later found out that the monastery which we saw is actually the headquarters of the Orthodox Church in Russia). So roll on Plan C.

Melnikov's House

Plan C was to catch the Metro back to the centre and go for a stroll down the pedestrian street Arbat, which is supposed to be alive with buskers and artists – as well as lined with coffee shops and tacky souvenir stalls. By the time we made it there a lot of the stalls selling pictures were packing up but there were still plenty of people about. Along the way we saw the unusually shaped house of brick and plaster built by Konstantin Melnikov in the late 1920s. At the other end we had a look at one of the spired buildings referred to as Stalin’s Seven Sisters – this one housed the Foreign Ministry and reminded us of the building in the Ghost Busters movie. On our way back up Arbat we stopped to see a busker start his routine. We couldn’t understand his patter of course but he did things like walk and do push-ups on freshly smashed glass, stand on a bed of nails, and stick a six inch nail up his nose. For his finale he had a member of the audience lie on the ground with a banana tucked into the waist of his pants then swinging a samurai sword to cut the banana in half without touching the guy’s stomach.

The busker's finale

By now dusk was approaching so we walked up to Red Square to see what it looked like under lights. The GUM department store was light up a bit like a Christmas tree, but the St Basils certainly looked good. We also checked out a display of excellent National Geographic photos that were setup on display in the square outside the State Museum of History.

We opted to walk back to the hostel, stopping at the local super market to buy some sandwiches for dinner – somehow it felt like we hadn’t done enough walking around to warrant a big dinner.