Day 10 -- Travel to Moscow, subways and Red Square at night.
Travelling through the countryside, full of these lovely wooden cottages, and trees and trees.
This brand new rest stop just opened, so we stopped there. It had a cafe and working bathrooms,
and was actually pretty nice. Maybe next year they can get the parking lot paved.
We are coming into town...
...getting our first glimpses of Moscow.
They hosted the World Cup in 2018 and built this big stadium.
You can see that it is not as picturesque as Saint Petersburg.
The city is growing and there are high-rise apartments everywhere.
Our hotel, the Crowne Plaza in the World Trade Center area.
It is an atrium hotel, and much nicer than the others. The cock on the top of this clock
is animated and moves and crows on the hour.
Our room...
...the nicest one we had.
In the background is one of the "seven sisters", seven identical skyscrapers around the city.
In the bottom right is the pariah lounge.
Our optional tour this evening takes us on the subway system. This rotunda is actually the subway
entrance.
Down, down, down we go.
The subway stations are exceptionally clean, especially for serving 9 million passengers a day.
Each one is decorated in a different form.
This one is done in mosaics of the history of Russia.
Kim and Vlad.
The air vents still harken back to the soviet era.
One last mosaic from the first station.
The next station is dedcorated with large stained glass windows.
Again, the art celebrates the glory of the motherland and the working classes.
Looks a little different than New York City.
Even the celings are done up right.
This is part of the ceiling detail, featuring gilded mosaics of Lenin and other scenes.
Another status of Lenin. The hammer and sickle above symbolize the unity of the working and
peasant (farmer) classes.
Most of our group appears to have never seen a metro before, based on how inefficiently they get on and off.
Another beautiful celing. It is 8:30 pm now, so it's not very busy.
This station is decorated with bronze statues of the working class.
Here is a soviet athlete, a Russian working class man, and Wade.
The bronzes line all of the alcoves.
Rubbing the cock for luck.
Now on to a highlight: Red Square at night.
The Iberian Gate and Chapel.
The GUM department store.
I think Disneyland gets their decorating ideas here.
The Kremlin is on our right...
...and the GUM department store is on our left.
Spasskaya (Savior) Tower.
Lenin's tomb; unfortunately, it's only open on Mondays.
Us with St. Basil's and the Savior Tower.
A loverly picture with St. Basil's.
The State Historical Museum.
Walking past, and getting a slightly different angle of the towers.
It's meant to look different from every angle.
One last shot.
Many of the commercial buildings are lit up at night.
