Despite being dead for over 80 years, Lenin still proves to be incredibly popular and we joined a queue of at least 150 people of varying ages and nationalities. Contradicting information struck again and most of the queuing time was preoccupied with trying to work out where we could check the bag only to find out actually we could do it just before the entrance. And so we wandered along the Kremlin wall, Rhys trying to recognise names before heading into the mausoleum.
From there we grabbed an early lunch and planned out the rest of the day, next stop Christ the Saviour Church, one of the main Orthodox Christian Churches in the world. The most incredible part of the whole thing we agreed was that the building is younger than we are; you just don't get things that grand built anymore.
We haven't mentioned the metro (apart from our athlete sighting), not only does it seem incredibly efficient with trains appearing every two minutes, but the stations themselves are beautiful, with sculptures and statures and generally gorgeous floors and ceilings- like underground palaces. of course we did the compulsory lucky dog stroking but in general even around rush hour they seemed pretty spacious (or maybe we were just lucky).
Last stop of the day was the Armoury in the Kremlin, after being told on Sunday there was no ticket booth inside, we queued outside and with some planning (joining the queue at the right time to enter the ticket office 45 minutes before the tour when tickets are released) and some luck, we got tickets, saving £10 a head for being students, -those cards have really paid for themselves. The armoury was good, though the audio tour was slightly infuriating in that it jumped between cases missing out amazing works of art. Definitely the favourite were the Fabergé eggs, in particular the one containing a working model of the trans Siberian railway train...very appropriate I feel for the end of our time in Moscow.
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