GOODBYE MOSCOW – YOU WERE AWESOME

WEATHER:  Bloody Freezing Tops 2C – Lows -1C

HIGHTLIGHT OF THE DAY:  TGI Friday mudslide

BUMMER OF THE DAY: Weather was a little crap to start – but cleared up, well to 2C

BUYS OF THE DAY:  TGI mudslide – I don’t even know how much I paid….

We had the day free today, no commitments to meet the crew till 9pm that night, where we had a transfer booked to take us to the train station and on to the last part of our rail journey to St Petersburg.  The only stipulation was we had to be checked out of our rooms by midday.  As the weather had not improved, it was still snowing with some showers now and then, I decided to have a lay in and stay in the room till exactly 12 noon, check out and then catch the metro and head to the post office to send some stuff home.

Well I ran into Christine and Eric in the luggage room and we decided to get a game plan together for the afternoon and away we went to spend our last day in Moscow.  We had to still check out, and this can be a very testing time.  A little patience is required, as they certainly run on Russian time, and they certainly will not go out of their way to be helpful.  They had 7 queue’s happening with only 4 staff.  You didn’t know what line was for what, so we decided to spread out and we all jumped in a line to see who would get served first.  Well I made it first after about 20 minutes, told the lady I wanted to check out, she took my card and said fine.  Um – well I need to get my passport back and she pointed to where Eric was waiting, so he had the right line after all.  If you don’t laugh at these things it can really ruin your trip.  I guess for them it is an organized chaos and must work for them – somehow.

First stop was St Basil’s Cathedral. This is the famous coloured church in Red Square.  It is only open to the public on certain days, so we thought it would be worth the look inside.  I am sure there are not many people that take the time to go inside this much photographed building and we were right. After paying the $200R there was only a handful of people inside the church.  I know what you are thinking, seen one church, seen them all, but St Basil’s is actually a little different as it is 8 churches all in one.  After leaving the ground floor, the second level was like a maze of rooms and chambers and the view back to Red Square was also quite spectacular.

Lunch was next.  As mentioned previously, I was in Moscow in 1999, and back then there weren’t a lot of English speaking food places to eat at.  After eating a hot dog in the park for lunch and dinner on the first night (only thing the vendor sold – so no stuffing up) I walked further afield and found a TGI Fridays that had a picture menu.  So now 12 years on, it was time to have lunch down memory lane, and we ate lunch at TGI Fridays Moscow.  The BIG draw card for Christy and I was the mudslides they sell there, and it was just divine and to have a bacon cheeseburger with it, it was nice just for a change from dumplings, cabbage and potatoes.

I then headed to the post office, to send some stuff home.  Now I knew this was either going to be easy or very difficult?  Once again there were 2 lines to choose from, after asking 3 people in front of me if I was in the right queue, to get the blank faces staring back at me, I decided to pick one and hope that I was in the right line.  Well 20 minutes later, I get to the little window, popped my stuff I was wanting to send on the counter and told her I wanted to send this’ pointing to my bag’ to Australia.  She looked at me, spoke Russian, and waited for my response.  So I repeated the same thing again and I got more Russian.  So I rephrased my question and said Australee – souvenirs and the penny dropped and she understood I wanted to post it to Australia!  In the end I got the package away (well we will see) for the grand total cost of $30, which included the box, for 1.083kg.  I didn’t think that was too bad.  Second box sent home – it will be like Christmas when I get back the way I am going.  I am also including a little something for my god-daughters every time I send a parcel home – just so they won’t forget me!

Our last thing we wanted to do was take a ride around on the Moscow Metro.  The stations are just magnificent, from mosaics, to lead lighting, to paintings to sculptures, each station is designed differently and you actually feel like you are walking around a museum.  It was quite difficult to get pictures, as it is illegal to be taking pictures of the metro, not sure why, maybe it is a security thing, but I managed to snap off a few photos for my collection.  It was around 4pm by this stage, and it was pretty cool to just stand there and see all the people pass you by and the masses of people coming and going on each train.  The average daily passenger traffic during the year is 6.6 million passengers per day. The highest passenger traffic is highest on weekdays, when the Metro carries over 7 million passengers per day. The traffic is lower on weekends.  With only 182 stations, that’s approximately 38,461 people through a station a day – madness.  The Moscow Metro is the world's second most heavily used rapid transit system after Tokyo's twin subway and I can see why.  We rode the circle line, getting on and off stations that were recommended for their opulence and we weren’t disappointed.

We departed the hotel at 9pm for the train station, which is about a 25 minute ride and our train departed Moscow at 11pm.  I am glad I had a chillaxing morning, as it just would have made for a massive day if we had of been on the go from 9am. 

Goodbye Moscow – you were a cold son of a gun – but I enjoyed every minute.

Our arrival into St Petersburg will be at 6.45am – where we will find ourselves at the end of the line, literally.  After 18 days, 156 hours of train travel and 8900km clocked up, we will finish our massive Trans Mongolian train journey across a continent.  If you have ever had inkling to do the trip, I would highly recommend it to anyone.  It has certainly been a journey of a lifetime for me and I will take away many good memories and a few new friends as well for good measure.