Moscow

Well, we made a stop in Yaroslavl and saw some rather uninteresting things. Even the shopping was awful so the ship and this blog moved on.....next stop: Uglich. There, we were scheduled to visit another monastery and see more icons, so we bailed on the program and went shopping. I mean- really. We're pretty tolerant but all these dead people were about to kill us... Near the port there was a nest of souvenir stalls, so we dusted off our rubles, dollars and euros and set out. We were scoping it all out, deciding on gifts and knick knacks and such- when a huge rain storm blew up and in. Here we were, trying our best to help out the local economy..... But we were determined, and waited out the bluster with several local Russian ladies, and soon we were back in action. As many of the stalls had similar stuff we made our decisions based not necessarily on whether or not they spoke English, or even prices, but on whether or not they would smile or in some way acknowledge our presence. You'd be surprised at how few did.....the Russians aren't as bad as the Poles (Yikes!) but they're not a whole lot better. And the French are given a bad time! They should mount a publicity campaign because compared to the Eastern Europeans they are positively motherly. Anyway- not to worry- we dropped several hundred rubles and went back home happy. Now we just have to decide how we're going to get it all to Hong Kong and on to China....

So we set sail from Uglich with Moscow in our sights. We had had a mental picture of St. Petersburg with the rivers, the Hermitage and all, and it was pretty close. A beautiful, old city. But Moscow has been surprising. We envisioned more of the soviet-style, concrete block architecture, all the while remembering that Moscow has nudged Tokyo as the most expensive city in the world. Well! Yesterday we visited Red Square and it gives some of the most beautiful plazas in the world a run for their money. And I do mean money. Zut. Here's a picture of one of the apartment buildings just outside of the main city- the price of these apartments is 3-4 million, USD. We found a bottle of Clicquot champagne that we pay about $40 for in CA, here it was over $200 USD. Anyway, money isn't everything, I guess- there are lots of other things in life. Like weather. The record heat wave has been following us east- and we are averaging about 40-42 degrees C. That's over 100 degrees, and just goes to prove what our favorite tour guide, Victoria, says- "The life of a tourist isn't easy".

So we saw Red Square, and today the Kremlin. I always thought that the name "Red Square" was a reference to the Communist party- turns out that 'red" in Russian means "pretty"- and it is that for sure. At one end of the plaza sits St. Isaacs Cathedral. We didn't get to enter, but if we had, I"m sure there are more dead Russians buried inside. The outside was picturesque enough for me. And since they don't use a/c here, if it's 40 degrees outside, you can be sure it's 45 inside.