Day 26 - 20/06/2010 - 20:15 - Moscow, Russia
So today we set out to make sure we saw Lenin's Mausoleum as well as the Armoury chamber, and that is precisely what we did - yay for things going to plan!
We woke up this morning and had breakfast. The hotel is great compared to the one in St Petersburg, but the only problem is the walls are thin. There is a guy in the room next to us, who likes slamming doors and he usually wakes us up as he leaves his room to use the shared facilites. Today on the other hand, we were woken up by him slamming something else. We've seen this guy, and he definitely had a room to himself. However, there was a much younger voice, a female voice, complete with giggles and all kinds of sound effects I'm sure you can quite possibly imagine coming from the room this morning. I wonder how much an early morning call out costs in Moscow. Hmmm. He was getting bang for his buck again (seriously no pun intended) when we were leaving the hotel this morning. I found it very funny.
So we got to the city centre by 11:30am, where we deposited the bag in the cloackroom, with my camera AND phone deposited safely in the bag. We went to where the queue was - it was a lot longer than yesterday but nevertheless we managed to get in by 12:40 or so. You are sent along a one way route, along the Kremlin wall then into the Masoleum, down a fair few stairs, with guards every 10 metres or so along the route. The room Lenin in was very cold, you walked up and around a platform, where you could see his body and then back out. It was very strange to think how old his body is - but it still looked fairly human. He had facial hair and was dressed up in a suit. The only thing that detracted from his life like state was the colour of his skin. It was very white - not human white, just very very pale.
After that interesting wait and walk we had a quick drink bought from the supermarket in the sun (it was very hot today in Moscow, supposed to be hotter tomorrow too!) we then made our way to the Kremlin ticket office to try our luck getting a ticket into the Armoury. You need to buy tickets 45 minutes before a tour starts (thats when they go on sale). We got into the queue at 1:15pm, 30 minutes before they went on sale, got to the front 10 minutes later (much to our surprise) and got told to come back at 1:45pm, when they went on sale. The queue was longer now, so we went to the back. When we got to the front again, it was about 1:35/1:40pm and we tried another window. She sold us tickets. No wonder we didn't get any last time if they sell them before they go on sale!
So we had about 50 minutes to kill before we went into the Kremlin again. We walked along to the entrance for the Armoury Chamber (you can only use one of the two entrances) and sat on the grass by the Kremlin wall, outside the entrance as many others were doing - enjoying the sun.
The armoury chamber itself was very very impressive. Jewellery, Faberge eggs, luxurious plates and utensils, weapons and armour with jewels in, gold laced clothing and carriages (horse drawn) all appeared in the museum. It was all so grand, I dare say it probably in total would be enough of value to buy a small European country! It was absolutely amazing, and some of the things on show were beautiful. There were even a collection of throne chairs, of different Tsars! Incredible. It's just a shame that we weren't allowed to take photos here either, we took a grand total of 0 photos today, the lowest amount so far! Nevermind!
After those, we had a spot of lunch (a very late lunch, it was gone 4pm!) then headed back to the hotel via the Internet cafe in the Metro station and the stall where we like buying food from. It was funny, when he saw us today he had a massive smile on his face and spoke to us in English - considering he didn't speak much, he knew a lot! We had a kebab type wrap, which was absolutely lovely with a samosa too. We got back to the hotel to watch the Italy game (what a waste of time that was!) and now we are chilling out - it's still pretty hot outside - I think I might go and sit on the balcony (yes we have one!) with a beer!
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