Looking north into Red Square - The Kremlin walls are on the left, St Basil's Church on the right and the stands for the Military Tattoo in the centre.
The palatial exterior of GUM the Harrods of Moscow - GUM stands for Glavny Universalny Magazin (or bloody big department store!) Unlike former pre-perestroika times it is now very upscale.
After yesterday's frantic arrival throes, we have begn to feel much more at ease in this city. There are essentially two rings around the city above ground - the inner "garden" and the outer "boulevard" ring (we are nicely headquartered in between these rings) and a third underground ring served by the Metro (line # 5) the Brown line. We have found it easisest to come and go from a station on the Green line from the "M" station, that goes via 4 stops to Paveletsky station where we will catch the AeroportExpress train to Domodevodo Airport - Actually, being super-uptight about these things since our flight home leaves at 05:00 am, we did a dry run this morning - very smooth. Domodevodo has been upgraded and looks like any other large airport (a nice change from St Petersburg!). Afterward we returned to town getting off at the Bolshoi Theatre stop whence we circumvented the Kremlin, about a 3K walk, ending up at Red Square where we watched some of the Tattoos performers rehearsing. You can see a trailer of the tattoo here www.kremlin-military-tattoo.ru/en/video Unfortunately it rained again - now that would put a damper on things tomorrow night! To get out of the rain we dodged into GUM - the Harrods of Moscow - It has come a very long way since the old days, as has all of Russia it seems - we are amazed by the large number of high-end cars from "The West", especially Range-Rover Vogues, HSEs and Sport models. Along with high-rollers come sexily clad "young things" whose uniform consists of fitted black leather jackets, plus your choice of drain-pipe jeans or micro-skirts finished off with seriously high heels (5"-6") including 2" platforms - it is quite interesting watching them negotiate the cobblestones and uneven pavements. Sortalike Victoria Beckham is their role model! Gottagonow - it's happy hour!
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