Blog from Moscow 6-15-09

I'm in Moscow with Dan now for the final stop in my trip. It's been a lot of fun seeing him and Ruth again. Moscow has a very distinctive look especially at night. The way they light up their buildings feels very...imperial...or something.

We went to Nizhniy Novgorod over the weekend where I saw their Kremlin and we walked around. I also met Natasha and Andre, some of Dan and Ruth's friends. We had dinner at their place and had a good time. The night went late, however, as things usually do.

Last night, back in Moscow, we met up with another one of Dan's friends named Alex who has a car. We went to the river to go on a boat ride around the center of Moscow. We were planning on going on the last one for the day. However, our plans were foiled when we found out that they didn't go out unless there were at least 10 people. They didn't tell us this at the ticket window. Apparently, they used to have a sign with that information, but management came by and told them to take it down. With a brilliant verbal thrashing by Alex, we somehow got our money back. He solidly berated the lady at the ticket counter telling her this was no way to welcome visitors to Russia. She proceeded to say that she did not have any money, which was, I guess, sort of true, but not missing a beat, Alex jumps in saying, "We are in Moscow, one of the largest cities in the world. How can you not have any money?" The whole situation was quite amusing.

Since we couldn't go on the boat ride, Alex took us to a park that he found last week, and we walked and talked for a while. Then we went into the center and saw some interesting sights. At the Kremlin, Alex pointed out a spot in the wall where it didn't quite line up. I took a picture of it the following day. The basilica was beautiful. I think it might be one of the architectural wonders of the world; I'm not sure, though.

Today, we just took it easy. We just walked around and hung out. After Dan's night class, however, Alex called again and invited us to dinner. It was a traditional Ukrainian restaurant where we had Kavas, borsch, and some sort of beef dish with mushrooms and potatoes. It was really good, but it was a lot of food as well.