City Tour with Dan

After a wonderful breakfast, we met Dan to begin our city tour. Shamil, our driver from yesterday, was back today to chauffeur us around town. It was a lovely day....the weather was perfect! Again let me say, "What a contrast to our last trip here!"

Dan as we begin our tour of the city. We are standing in front of the KGB headquarters at a memorial to all the people who died in the gulags (Siberian prisons).

This rock was brought from the first gulag. The Russians took a monastery on the White Sea, forced the monks to leave or be imprisoned, and made it their pilot gulag. It was very much the way the Nazi's made Dachau their test concentration camp. It was a very moving memorial. Dan told us the story of how at age 69 his great grandfather was arrested because his name sounded German and he had friends in France. He was charged with being a German spy and was sent to a gulag in Kazakhstan. The family was not told where he was imprisoned or even the charges. He was never seen again by his family. Dan only knows this information because of recently released records by the KGB.

The tan building is the KGB headquarters. It is still a powerful police organization in Russia today.

The view of the Kremlin from the south bank of the Moscow River. It reminded us of Pont Neuf in Paris. Lots of river cruises begin at this point.

The gold onion domes of the Kremlin. The fortress here was started in the 1100's. We will take a tour of the Kremlin on Friday.

Dan giving us an interesting history lesson...with pictures for those of us needing visuals. :)

Haley proclaimed... "This city is even more beautiful than Venice!" Say What???? The golden domes are cathedrals: The Royal Cathedral, Coronation Cathedral & Burial Cathedral (left to right)

Haley taking notes on her phone. A much more efficient way of taking notes than pen and paper.

This garden was used as a market and place of execution in the 1700's. Protests against Stalin were also staged here. Today it has a memorial to children that shows the 14 vices of adults. It was very thought provoking.

The memorial to children.

The children are in gold to show their innocence.

Metal trees covered in love locks. We saw 2 brides and grooms putting locks on the trees.They throw the key into the Moscow River.

This building used to be the apartment complex for the most powerful families of the Soviet Union. Stalin had the placed bugged and over 300 of his adviser's were arrested. Stalin was a harsh and paranoid leader.

Christ the Savior Church. The original church was Russian Orthodox and also served as a memorial for the victory over the French (Napoleon) in 1812. It was torn down in 1932 in order to build a huge monument to Lenin. The Soviets tried to purge religion from the country. Lenin died and Stalin decided to build Europe's largest swimming pool instead. Dan said his father used to swim in the pool. After the fall of communism, the church was rebuild by the state. It took 40 years to build the original and only 5 to build an identical replacement.

No pictures were allowed to be taken in the church but take my word for it....it was beautiful.

Our lunch at a sculpture museum. 1/3 of the place was a restaurant and 2/3 of it was a museum.

Haley even tried the borscht soup!

Tim's Curry Soup with fried olives and coconut shavings.

Haley got the roasted chicken with vegetables. It came with a whole split chicken on a sizzling platter.

After lunch we walked through the sculpture portion.

The sculpture is famous in Russia but I forgot to write down his name. His is also a professor at Moscow State University. His sculptures were interesting and beautiful.

Sculpture of the the Romanov family.

Restaurant entrance - just a little odd.

Leo Tolstoy's residence and gardens.

The gardens were lovely and so peaceful right in the heart of the city.

Moscow State University - 50,000 students started by Elizabeth I daughter of Peter I

Sparrow Hill - the highest point in Moscow.

Sparrow Hill is the highest point in Moscow and the starting point of the alpine ski jump in the 1980 Winter Olympics

Small Cathedral on Sparrow Hill dedicated to a doctor who spent his life raising the standards of the living conditions and the health of prisoners.

Grand Monument to Peter the Great. He built the first Russian Navy and brought the country into the Renaissance.

Christ the Savior Cathedral whose original structure was blown up by Lenin.  The planned replacement edifice to Lenin never materialized due to invading Nazis. The vacant land was eventually used as a public swimming pool and the structure show here is an exact replica which was rebuilt as Soviet Communism crumbled and religion once again as allowed to take hold.

A park where old sculptures go to die. All of Stalin's statues were pulled down during the revolution of 1990-91. This Stalin sculpture sans nose was moved relocated to this spot and a new memorial created to show how Stalin changed (ruined) the lives of so many innocent people.  He is surrounded by sculptures of the lives he destroyed.  The wall of sculpted heads behind him encased in bars and barbed wire represents some of those lives.

These eerie sculptures show how lives were changed from human beings to demoralized fragments of pitiful creatures after they were sent to live in the gulag.

Lenin lives here, too!

Although most modern history paints Stalin as the "bad guy" of World War II it is widely believed that Lenin paved the way for Stalin's cruel leadership.

Entrance to Gorky Park.

We ended our day with dinner at a lovely Italian restaurant called Cantinetta Antinori. The pizzas and pasta were fantastic and the creme brulee for dessert was a perfect way to end a great meal. :) Afterwards we walked Arbat street and made a quick stop at the ATM. Tomorrow we take a day trip out into the country and visit a beautiful monastery. I have a feeling that Haley will be doing some serious shopping in that little village.