Sophie's travels 2011-2012: 2/2/2012 Moscow, Russia TRANS SIBERIAN RAILWAY

We arrived in Moscow at 9am after a very average sleep on the train which stopped a lot during the night. We were met by Julia our honcho for Moscow and caught a mini bus from the train station to the hostel: Godzillas where we had to register our passports again. After dropping off our bags in our 8 bed dorm we walked down the road to a restaurant for breaky. After breaky Julia helped us get some tickets to the ballet for that evening which was great. It was a cold snowy grey day so we decided it was good weather for museums. We caught the tube to the Gulag history museum which was interesting but difficult to concentrate after very little sleep! From there we went to the Red Square which was freezing and snowing a blizzard but still very impressive. We walked to GUM a big shopping centre with a glass roof where we had some lunch and warmed up. We walked to the tomb of the Unknown Soldier then caught the tube to The Cathedral of Christ the Saviour which was amazing inside – all gold walls and painted ceilings and MASSIVE! It was originally built to commemorate Russia’s victory over Napoleon, the original was destroyed by Stalin who planned to build a palace of Soviets but instead for 50 years the sight was used as the world’s largest swimming pool. After Stalin’s falling it was re-built back into a church. We then made our way back to the hostel briefly before heading out to the ballet. The ballet was in the Kremlin theatre and was a production of sleeping beauty – it was brilliant!