If you want a review to romance about Moscow and tell you about the glistening streets of the Arbat, you'll have to go elsewhere, because this review is aimed at telling you more practical hints for going to Moscow.
I only went for 5 days, so there will be lots of places that went unexplored but it's also a good amount of time to see all the major sites.
We flew with BA into Domodedovo airport and made the decision to take a taxi into the city. There is a train as well which takes about 45mins and which stops at a railway station out in the West. But we booked a cab at one of the stalls and it cost us about £20. Not cheap but ok.
We stayed at the Radisson SAS Slayvanskaya, which is supposed to be a 5* hotel but wasn't extremely luxurious. It was quite expensive at £100 a night but we wanted to have an International Brand name. Next time, I'd go through Priceline.co.uk and see if I could get a cheaper price. But the hotel was fine, it had good exercise facilities with a huge pool, good service and a range of restaurants (all
quite expensive!). But the rooms were big and it's right by Kievskaya Metro station and a 15 minute walk from Arbat.
While we're on Arbat, I wasn't particularly mesmerised by this street, though I've heard so much about it. It's a potholed pedestrianised street (which is undergoing renovation at the moment) lined with restaurants serving food at London prices. £8 for a pasta dish! There are numerous stalls selling things but it lacks a buzzy kind of atmosphere.
However, the Metro is fantastic to get around in. And besides from the taxi to and from the airport, we didn't use anything else. Tickets are very cheap. We bought a card that allows 10 single journeys and it cost us about £2. The Metro, unlike the London tube, is very efficient and quick, and despite it being some 27 degrees outside - very well ventilated and cool. There are stops everywhere and it's very well connected. However the signs are all in Russian Cyrillic so ensure you have a decent bilingual guide of the system as there aren't that many maps inside the train, and hardly any in the stations.
So onto sights. Red square is pretty awesome and the first sight of St Basils’ cathedral makes your heart skip a beat. It’s also incredibly pretty and well lit at night. There are a number of smaller cathedrals around Kitai Gorod area. We used the Lonely Planet Moscow guidebook (incidentally, a guide is essential as things are not well signposted or have information on them) and it has a good walking tour of the area, which took us past some very pretty cathedrals and took about an hour (with plenty of photo taking).
We went to see Lenin in his Mausoleum and were in the queue that snakes around the side of red square (it’s not, like most Russian tourist things, signposted). We were at the top of the queue half an hour before the official closing time of 1pm (Lenin is only open on certain days at certain times). However, the group in front of us who had an English-speaking guide, were told by their guide that they weren’t letting anyone else in. The guards who were letting people in didn’t signal anything to the people in the large queue but were arbitrarily letting people in – I suppose they must either be the right person or be paying the right amount of money. This was very irritating since it was so hot and we’d been queuing for about 30 mins to get in and were there at the right time, and they didn’t even have the courtesy to tell people it was closed (people were still joining the queue). But were still letting people in who had the right connections/used the right money. We left the queue and went to join the queue for the Kremlin.
We queued for 20 minutes in the wrong queue, as ever, things were labeled in Russian. When we finally joined the Kremlin queue, it was about 2 hours before we got a ticket and got in. This was in the baking midday sun! The tickets for the (supposedly) very impressive armory were sold out by time we got our tickets, so our tickets were only for the grounds. There are also tickets for the Diamond Fund exhibition. Together with photo permits for them all, this whole package will cost about £25 per person! Which I think is pretty steep.
And was it worth it? It’s questionable. The highlights are the old cathedrals inside with their domes and also what is said to be the world’s biggest bell. But you don’t get anywhere near government buildings of course and other than a well-tended garden, there isn’t much more to it. Bit disappointing.
However, we loved the VDNKh, which is now known as the All-Russian Exhibition Centre. This is reached by the Metro of the same name. Originally built by Stalin to celebrate the Socialist economy, it’s a huge park with various pavilions built to celebrate various aspects of the USSR’s achievements e.g. a pavilion for Physics, Culture, Agriculture etc. In front of the one celebrating Space is a launcher that Yuri Gagarin used - very cool! In front of VDNKh is the Space Museum, which was unfortunately closed when we went but in front of that is a fantastic statue of a spaceship flying off into space. Great.
We wondered around the site, it also has some fantastic fountains and the juxtaposition of a site originally intended to celebrate the successes of Socialism that has now been turned into a haven of Capitalist markets – full of knock-off cheap goods made in China was fascinating.
Then the food. This was the most disappointing of all. The food was generally very expensive, all the restaurants are about London prices, but the food is sub-par in terms of quality and taste. We ended up having MacDonald’s a couple of times!! We went to a Russian chain of restaurants, Yolki-Palki and paid £18 for 2 people to eat stodgy potatoes and meat and beetroot. Not very appetizing.
We also went to see the Ballet (not the Bolshoi) and at £15 a ticket, this was certainly worth doing! The hotels always have details of what’s on, and to avoid a separate booking charge, we went straight to the venue to book them.
All in all, I’d recommend Moscow for the experience but don’t go if you are on a budget or want a relaxing holiday. If I were to go again I’d also pick a more central hotel – the Hotel Metropole has a great location opposite the Bolshoi, but to be honest it will be unlikely.
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Hi. Thanks for a nice review with a nice combination of what to expect and practicalities. My wife might be going there on a job trip in January and I hope that I can come along :-) This review has given me some info about what to expect. Regards Gard
petitesquirt 12.08.2004 21:04
Fascinating. I think I like their train systems better than the one here.
Bollinger28 12.08.2004 12:23
A most informative yet interesting review. Regards Lexy
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