russia: moscow

When we were making our travel calendar for the year we got to February and realized we hadn't planned any time in Moscow for a while, so this weekend we decided to stay in the city.

We started our Saturday even earlier than we would if it had been a work day, but it was a good reason. Claire had gotten the contact information of a massage therapist, and we'd arranged for each of us to have a massage.

The price was a lot cheaper than each of us had expected, and it was 90 minutes each. It was amazing. I definitely need to do that again, it was sooooo worth getting up early.

After the massages we went into the city center, with the plan of going to see a couple iconic sights in Moscow. Unfortunately, as we got close to the first of our sights, we saw a queue. A very long queue. A queue that seemed to go foreva, we didn't actually figure out where the end was at that time. So we decided to put off seeing the State History museum another time.

We walked across Red Square, (currently still filled with a holiday village of sorts,) to St. Basil's Cathedral, only to find another ginormous queue. So that got pushed back as well.

At that point Claire looked at social media and figured out that this was the birthday weekend of the state museum system. On this weekend you don't have to pay an entry fee to a number of the state museums, hence the really long queues.

We are not made of money by anyone's definition, but we had no desire to visit these sights with everyone else in the city, so we opted out. We'll pay the entrance fee and visit another time. If we are around next year, we'll make sure to travel outside of Moscow this particular weekend.

We walked to Novy Arbat street, and found a place called the Museum of Optical Illusions. It's not a museum at all, it's basically a place with a heap of painted areas where you can insert yourself into scenes and take photos. We took a LOT of photos, just like everyone else there.

After exhausting ourselves and all the opportunities for photos, we walked all the way back to Red Square, all the way through. We walked to one of our favourite Moscow restaurants, a place called Kimchi. Korean/Chinese food for dinner, yum.

The next morning we slept in, woo hoo. At least we tried, I'm not sure any of us are actually capable of sleeping very late in the morning.

We met up at a metro station, then walked to the boat dock near the Radisson hotel (which used to be the Hotel Ukraine.) 

We'd already bought tickets for a boat ride on the Moscow river, I don't think the price was any different if we bought ahead or not.

It was easy to board the boat, put our coats into coat check, and be seated. Right from the very beginning, a Russian family at the table next to ours was giving us dirty looks, though we never figured out why. Come to think of it, it wasn't the entire family giving us dirty looks, it was just the mother/wife.

 We ordered drinks, and sat back to relax. The boat ride was 2.5 hours, going around several bends in the river, then coming all the way back. The best part of the ride is when we went past the Kremlin, as it is one of the iconic parts of the city. I also liked going under the bridges, one of which is being worked on. (I wonder if there is a date for when that construction is supposed to be finished.)

The temperature inside the boat was good, I was comfortable. The drinks were good, but expensive, which was to be expected. 

 Since this was the middle of February, the weather wasn't amazing, so the boat wasn't at all busy. I liked it.

After the boat we started to walk back to the metro station when we passed a restaurant with Georgian food. Angela is a huge fan of hachapuri (the famous georgian bread which kinda looks like a boat with an egg in the middle,) so we had to go in.

When the menu was in English, and the prices seemed reasonable, we had to try the food. It was good, and we were happy we'd stopped.

From there we got closer to the metro station, and stopped to take team photos at the holiday lights that are still set up. Good fun.

Finally we started on our last 'chore' of the weekend. We're planning a trip to Siberia in early March, so I needed ski pants, and Angela needed boots and a coat. I found my ski pants, though they're probably too big.

After that we hit up a big grocery store, since we were already there.

This weekend wasn't so much about travel, but we still considered it to be successful. There is always something to see and do in Moscow :)