September 11th in Moscow

September 11th

It's always weird to be away on 9/11 and in honor of home, I saved the last portion of my book, Forever by Pete Hamill for this day. It was a fantastic book only made better by focusing on the best city in the world.

After breakfast and reading, I ventured out with another courier from the Museum of the City of New York. I took a ton of photos and you can view them all on this Snapfish album. It's well worth your time to go take a peek!

The morning was grey, drizzly and cold....but more on the shitty Moscow weather in blog posts to come. We walked a good deal out of our way because we could not seem to find crossings on the huge unfriendly traffic packed streets. Said roads are made even more ugly by the criss-crossing lines for the trolleys and all the advertisements every ten feet.

But we eventually made it to the Kremlin complex and after holding up one finger to the lady in the booth and forking over 300 rubles, we got a ticket to....something. When everything is written in Cyrillic it's all a crap shoot.

We sort of guessed what the ticket included and followed along behind the crowd into the compound. While listening to some English language tours and reading my guide book we learned that this Tsar's bell is the largest in the world weighing 200 tons. A smaller predecessor was built in the middle of the 17th century but was destroyed in the Moscow fire of 1701. Three decades later the Empress Anna ordered those fragments recast into a much larger bell. However, the resulting bell cracked and fell into its casting pit. Way to go Anna!

This is also the largest cannon in the world.

Another notable structure is the Ivan the Great Bell Tower, which my book told me marks the exact center of Moscow and is supposed to resemble a burning candle. Until the Russian Revolution, this was the tallest structure in the city and it's 21 bells would sound the alarm if any enemy was approaching.

While we were inside some of the churches, the sun came out making for some breath taking shots of cathedral square.

We took advantage of the sun and walked the entire outside edge of the Kremlin compound and through the adjacent gardens and shopping area.

Sadly, the main entrance to Red Square was closed due to a grand performance taking place that week. (After 8 days in Moscow I never got the panoramic shot of the entire space. But I did capture some of the nicer buildings like this one. )

And despite the square being closed, we did work our way around to St. Basil's cathedral! This sucker certainly is a wonder!

There's a long story behind what I am wearing in this photo. When and if it comes to fruition, you will read about it on the blog.

After viewing the inside of St. Basil's, which is just a maze of stairs and passageways, we toured the Armory. This is a repository for all sorts of treasures of the Imperial court from the chalice of Yuri Dolgoruky and the coronation dress of Catherine the Great, to a stupendous collection of over fifty Faberge eggs, and crowns you could not believe. Next door, at the Diamond Treasury, visitors can catch a glimpse of the infamous 190-carat Orlov Diamond. We skipped this because it cost about $25!

Because we were exhausted, another meal in the hotel where the menus are in English, was in order. But all in all, today was a damn good day!

PS - here is your Stray Dog Of The Day. I'm pretty sure I got a photo of at least one pooch each day I was in Russia.