Moscow

Moscow is different in many ways...there are 12 million people in the city and 9 million of them use the Metro every day. We were taken on a tour of the Metro which was an experience in itself. The underground rail stations are fitted out with chandeliers, paintings, statues, stained glass windows and mosaic paintings, which are the very last things you would expect to see in a railway station.

Red Square by night is beautiful...there is a large very modern department store that is positioned on one side with churches at either end and then of course the Kremlin wall forms the other side. In front of the fort there is a cemetery containing the graves of all the presidents except for Boris Yeltsin and Khrouchtchev. Because many celebrations and rock concerts are now held in the Red Square the cemetery is going to be moved because it is the general consensus that it is no longer an ideal place for a cemetery.

Us in The Red Square.

We toured inside the Kremlin...not very interesting except for the museum containing clothes worn by Peter the Great, Catherine the Great and many others from that era, along with gold trinkets, bowls and serving dishes, Faberge eggs, armory, carriages of gold encrusted with jewels and much much more. No wonder the starving peasants wanted to kill the aristocrats.

The traffic is horrendous. When Mr Putin drives to work the police stop all traffic five minutes before he is due to travel along a road causing more chaos. His officials have chauffeur driven cars with a blue light on the top and a police escort. These officials are able to drive wherever and however they like, often causing fatal accidents. This has angered the public.