Wednesday we checked out of our St. Petersburg hotel and boarded a substitute tour bus. Our regular bus, with our faithful driver Sergei, left before breakfast with all the big luggage, which we would be waiting for us in our Moscow hotel upon arrival. We loaded an overnight bag (which we always carry packed in our regular suitcases in case of souvenir overload) onto the new bus along with our carry ons and set off for a river tour of the city; as there are parts you can’t see from a land vehicle. Our tour director surprised us with a champagne toast for our anniversary. There was also vodka offered around, which Dave tried and pronounced not as good as the one at the ballet.

After a lunch break (we had spotted a Pizza Hut from the river!) we continued on to the Hermitage. We saw several Da Vinci Madonnas, a large Rembrandt collection and a fair sized Monet collection, including one of my favorites, “Woman in a Garden” (which sounds way better in French.)  It would have taken the better part of a week to see everything there, but leaving the Monet collection we happened into an Asian exhibition, so I was very pleased.

Next we headed to dinner in a small local restaurant/hotel where we had another champagne toast for our anniversary!  Evidently there is a custom in Russia that anything like that must be toasted with as full a glass as possible, so I was feeling quite happy by that point. I barely remember the food, though, because Dave surprised me with the matching bracelet to the necklace he gave me for our wedding – he had hand carried it from Seattle to Tel Aviv and then Tel Aviv to St. Petersburg! Afterwards we went to a Cossack folklore show.  We have not been overly thrilled with other “local culture” type shows before and were very pleasantly surprised at the energy level and talent!

From there we took went to the train station, getting a look at the “high street” shopping along the way. In the station, we had just enough time to find a small bottle of wine and the Lays caviar potato chips I had become addicted to before boarding the midnight “Red Train” to Moscow.



We were booked into the first class sleeper cabins – definitely the way to travel!
 
   

The seating folded down into surprisingly comfortable beds; I slept like a log with the sound and motion of the train. When we awoke just outside Moscow the next morning, the attendant for our car had strong black tea ready for us, which was just the wakeup I needed to be ready to get off the train and back on the bus.

Our first stop after breakfast was the Borodino Panorama, a painting on 150m of canvas depicting the 1812 defeat of Napoleon outside of Moscow. There is a battleground diorama in the foreground that fades almost imperceptibly into the painting in the background; combined with the tape of battle sounds that plays on a loop it is really quite moving. Afterwards we went to the Moscow Metro for a ride to Red Square, with stops along the way to view some of the grand Stalin-era stations.

Red Square is really big, and is bordered on one side by the GUM Department store (actually a mall, in "American"), the Kremlin and Lenin’s mausoleum on the other and churches on both ends. We took some pictures and watched the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier; then re-boarded the bus for the trip to the Crowne Plaza Hotel, near to the “White House” where Putin works (also the site of the August 1991 attempted coup . After two full touring days and a late night on the train, a nap was in order. Next was a great local dinner in the hotel, including little baked pots of mushrooms in sour cream – yum! After that, we had the Moscow by night tour; our first stop was Moscow State University.

Next we took a walk around the lake that supposedly inspired Tchaikovsky to write Swan Lake – it was beautiful.



Behind the lake is Novodevichy Convent.



We also returned to Red Square to see it lighted for nighttime; the big red stars on top of the Kremlin are lit from inside, the churces are all aglow and GUM was covered in thousands of little white lights and was just spectacular – I would have liked to see it in the snow!