MONDAY - We have been very excited to tour the Kremlin and today was the day! Our guide, Igor, came at 10am and took us for our personal tour. He started with a nice overview of the
metro (Jeri's been working on understanding the metro and the stops so that we can get around the city on our own) and got us to the Kremlin quickly. (It's worth noting, no picture here really expresses how huge the Kremlin is, but
this might).
The Kremlin borders one side of Red Square and as you might imagine, is heavily guarded outside and inside. For a 30-something who remembers the cold war as a kid, approaching and being inside the Kremlin walls is something that I could not have imagined as a child, and for my part, remained a bit intimidating to approach.
"Kremlin" means "fortress" and indeed it is. Sixty foot walls, 20 feet thick surround the entire compound. It sits high above the Moscow river and overlooks the entire city. It's also one of the oldest structures there, enduring many attacks and invasions through the centuries. It's sort of a large triangle shaped fortification with a beautiful clock tower with bells on one end.
The Kremlin is where
Vladimir Putin works and his administration. Once inside, there was one modern looking administration building (not pictured) and many beautiful older administration buildings, all in a warm gold color that was beautiful against the gently falling snow.
There were also several orthodox churches most designed by Italian architects brought in by the czars.
Some churches were for men only, some for women only. One was used for coronations, another for baptisms of czars, and another for their burial.
In the one for burial, many past czars lie in
sarcophagi around the worship chamber. In this particular church, there were three men from a choir who sang while we were there.
The acoustics of the room were striking as the men's voices would ring in the chamber like bells long after they finished a note. They would often use this ringing sound to sing harmony against before the 'ring' of it died out entirely. Their singing would add new tones to start ringing against it. It was beautiful, hypnotic, and seemed over too quickly.
Just outside this particular church was an enormous bell cast by one of the czars (sorry, can't remember which just now), but damn... the thing's huge. Look at Jeri next to it. It weighs 200 tons and was cast on site.
We also visited the original patriarch's residence (what the catholic world would think of as a pope) and saw vestments of patriarchs dating back several centuries. Many were amazingly ornate, covered in pearls and woven or embroidered with gold thread.
We then toured the Armory, which sounds like a drab museum filled with guns and weapons. To our delight, it was filled with the treasures of state including a huge collection of the czars carriages, multiple heavy gospels (books) clad in gold and crusted with huge diamonds or emeralds as big as 50 cent pieces, coronation gowns of the czarinas in imaculate condition, the clothes of Peter the Great, diamond crusted swords, ornate guns, huge collections of massive gold and silver amusements or ornaments given to Russia from many countries, fraberge eggs gifted to the czarina, diamond encrusted thrones, and the crown jewels of Russia themselves...
Perhaps the most amazing item was a gift to the czarina of Alexander the Second: a silver dandelion, with delicate, tiny silver rods for the stem of each seed pod shaft, not much thicker than a hair. This shaft was tipped with the
actual tuft of a dandelion seed around the end, and in the middle of the tuft was a single, tiny, cut diamond. All was
exactly to the scale of a real dandelion in full, white bloom. As you slowly walked past or even turned your head, the sparkle of the tiny diamonds gave the impression of drops of dew glinting in the sunlight. It was something I couldn't have imagined was possible to create. Like the rest, it was incredible.
The enormity of treasure in this building was staggering.
Afterwards, we visited the eternal flame, dedicated to those who fought in the Great Patriotic War (World War II to us). Our tour guide had finished his day with us at this point and we were for the first time, free to roam unattended in Moscow. It was very fun and exciting to be managing in this enormous foreign city on our own.
We found our way through ordering a late lunch at a nearby shopping mall food court and did some shopping (yup, with non-english speakers), then took some good daytime pictures in Red Square and stopped into the
GUM (pronounced 'goom') to see how the very wealthy in Moscow shopped. But that's another story.
On the way, we came out of the metro station and found a great spot to take pics of the Triumphal Arch that sets between six lanes of extremely busy and fast traffic. The under pass walkway allowed us to come up into the median and take pictures. Jeri is that little speck under the arch to the right.
We toured Victory Park for the next hour, a large parade ground with impressive monuments to Soviet efforts in World War II, or The Great Patriotic War as it is know here.
