Time with the Rooskies 6/18
Our red eye flight from Athens to Moscow was only 3 hrs so we slept for 2 and ate gravy chicken somewhere in there. We landed at Moscow just before 5 and headed for the Aeroexpress train. For over $20 RT the train took us straight to the Metro after a 30 min ride. The ride was uninteresting but we did we lots of shoddy tall apartment structures. After leaving the train station we had to cross a huge street to reach the Metro. There were no crosswalks. I'm sure you needed to cross underground but there was hardly anyone out since it was so early and minimal cars, what's the worst that could happen? We walked then ran across the 12 lane road. On car was coming toward us, then he actually tried to hit us by crossing the lanes! WTF asshole.
We transferred from the train to the Metro with a slight encounter with a crazy or meth head. We were going down the very long escalator and he was at the bottom continuously walking on the up with his head down. He looked more like like a bachelor party gone wrong than your avg meth head. The worker stopped him, I thought he was going to shank someone. Anyways, once in the Metro there was no English. It's really hard to link a word in Cryllic to a sign, much harder than I expected. I asked a lady for help. She spoke no English so I showed her the stop we were looking for on the picture I took. She said stuff and pointed to the stairs. We started to walk over that way then decided against it because it looked like it was the way out. We came back and she came up to us and pointed in to the other stairs and signaled it was on another level. OK got it and it was a success. There are lots of up and overs in the tunnels in the subway.
We reached our destination and walked the streets lined with shoes and no people. It was after 7 so I guess tourist areas don't get started until later. It was done raining now which was awesome since Andy didn't have a jacket, however the no rain meant wind. We walked around the Red Square, saw the outside of Lenins mosealeam, St Basils Catherdral and the state museum. The sun was starting to come out which Andy needed to get his pics. We walked down to the bridge and down by the river waiting for coffee to open.
Once we finally got some coffee and a croissant we hit up the Kremlin. Inside the gates there's lots of cathedrals that were for the tzars back in the day. We went inside a couple and saw lots of beautiful icons. We were hungry due to all the food we've been eating every couple hours for the last two weeks so it was time for McDonalds. W didn't have much time so we couldn't hit up the large one. We only had 250RUP left and didn't know how to read cheeseburger in Cryilic but we were able to determine that they had the Big Mac and had enough for two. It was delish! Back on the Aeroexpress to the airport to buy some vodka and wait for journey home. A half Xanax on the plane and I'm out for hours.