Moscow, Trip 2

Our flight to Moscow was uneventful, it was nice to have 3 hours in JFK this time instead of having to run to catch our flight. It was snowing in Moscow when we landed and continued to snow the until we left there Sunday. It was so beautiful, our hotel room looked out on Red Square and St. Basils Cathedral and snow was everywhere.

View from our hotel

Moscow was quite the adventure, Iwanted to go to the huge outdoor craft market on Saturday, so we got up early and rode the subway, this quite a chore since we can't read Russian and missed our stop. It is funny how when you ask for directions (by pointing to the Map) every one talks up a storm even though they know you don't understand, but pointing eventually got us in the right direction. We got to Izmailovsky Park and it was snowing very hard, needless to say no outdoor craft market that day, but we did find Western World. We had a cup of coffee, got lost on the subway again and made it to Arbat Street about an hour later, Arbet is a lot like the main tourist street in St. Augustine Florida, the road is open only to pedestrians and lots of shops and vendors set up in the middle of the street, even in the snow. Rich bought a souvenir shot glass at first store, the next store we went into had the same one for half the price, he was a little upset. After that he haggled with all the shop keepers; if you walk out their store they say "we give you big discount!"
We walked all the way back to Red Square and went to the Kremlin, which was only open for groups; so we went on tour with some Scottish people. It was very interesting, and seems incredible to stand in a building built in the 1400's and hear the stories of czars and czarinas. Perhaps I stood in the same spot that Ivan the Terrible or Catherine the Great once stood.
Before we knew it was time to repack. Andre' of Peace Travel called and said we needed to be ready two hours earlier because of the snow. Three hours in the car and we made it to Domodevo Airport, it was very crowded, security is very tight. We had to take off our shoes, belt and watch, and they even frisk you - a first for me. We flew Siberia Air to Bratsk. It was horrible. It was a very old plane and smelled like men's urinal. The only saving grace was that there were only about 25 people on the flight, so we could fold the seats in front of us completely forward and lay with our legs straight out to sleep. Now to see our girls!!!

On Arabat Street - Russians love dachsunds too.