Day 43

Crazy busy roads! A little rant but why is it when faced traffic jams the world over car drivers forget that they are driving cars and think they are in mosquitoes and start darting about the place in the most unpredictable of manner. Anyway, I made it. Moscow, Mockba, Red Square, The Kremlin and all! I push my bike onto Red Square (no cycling allowed!) and take the selfie. This feels really exciting, it feels like I have covered some ground. From one edge of Europe to practically the other. I have a wander around Red Square, see St Basil's and Lenin's mausoleum. I walk along some of the streets that lead off Red Square and pass a Ferrari dealership, and the plethora of stores that now inhabit the GUM department store. During Soviet times this store was famous (infamous?) as it did not suffer the same shortages of goods that other stores in the USSR suffered from. Hence it would have lengthy queues of people trying to get in to try and buy what was on offer. As a cynic I feel that an element of that tradition has survived as now it is full of elite and very expensive branded goods, again mostly out of reach for the common individual.

I spend my first Moscow evening bar hopping and end up talking to a Chap from Vladivostok about Democracy. More on that later.






The photo is not very good but it is of my first glimpse of The Moscow Kremlin.