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(Note: Part of a series of entries from my handwritten travel journal.)

Thursday, 25 July 2013.

First thing this morning, after another fabulous breakfast at the Aurora Hotel we walked to Red Square to go into the Lenin tomb, something I've always wanted to do. Except when we got there Red Square was closed and nobody was allowed into the square - barricades and everything. It was closed because they were setting up for a big event to commemorate 1025 years of the Orthodox religion in Russia. There is to be a big concert tonight in the square. So we walked back to the hotel and wrote some postcards. After that we headed out to Lubyanka Square to see the former KGB headquarters building, which we both wanted to see as the Communist-era stuff is just really interesting.

KGB

Behind the KGB building there's a Starbucks, and here's what that looks like in Cyrillic.

starbucks

Here's a giant cathedral. This one is only a few years old. The original one was destroyed by Stalin, then there was a public pool on this spot for a long time, and then they rebuilt the original cathedral in, I think, 2005.

giant cathedral

Then we walked some more and tried to get lunch at a restaurant, but the waitress kept coming back and telling us that everything we ordered they were out of. How does a Russian restaurant not have pelmeni, pieroshkies, beef stroganoff, or their soup of the day on hand?? So we gave up and paid for our sparkling water ($10 for two glasses of water...) and left. We got kvass (yum!) ad sausages from a street vendor for pocket change and it was GOOD.

bigpanof sausage

Next up: The New Maidens Convent (Novodevichy), which was where unwanted wives and troublesome women "took the veil" in a 16th Century gothic building. So beautiful!

bestnewmaidens pic

Inside the grounds, onion domes peeked from behind and above in every direction and view:
inside new maidens

The Smolensky Cathedral was astounding - we finally got inside a Russian Orthodox church and there are frescoes on every wall that isn't icons or chandeliers covered in gold!

SAM_3798


SAM_3795


SAM_3790


SAM_3784


SAM_3783


SAM_3775

We then toured the cemetery attached to the convent. It is the final resting place for Boris Yeltsin, Kruschev, Checkhov, Rostropovich, Prokofiev, Shostokovich, Gogol, and many other famous and not-so-famous Russians. I like how their tombstones come in a wide variety of styles.

overallview

Here is the tombstone for Boris Yeltsin. He was very much beloved and even now has lots of flowers placed every day. It's made to look like a waving Russian flag from 3 kinds of stone quarried from different parts of Russia.

yeltsin

This is Shostokovich.

shostokovich

Krushchev.

kruschev

Just a really beautiful memorial to somebody not famous but clearly loved.

SAM_3814

And some of them simply reflect the profession and image of the person in the prime of their life. I think that's a beautiful way to remember someone:

militaryguy

ballerina

After that was a long slow bus ride through Moscow rush hour traffic to our river boat where we'll stay for the rest of the trip as we travel up the waterways of Russia to St. Petersburg.

Here are some things I snapped along the way, as there are way too many cars in Russia so you're never going too fast to snap a picture!

Some skyscrapers being built. They keep their skyscrapers away from the historic center of town.
skyscrapers

This is the biggest apartment building I have ever seen. It towered over us...I can't imagine living in something so massive and with so many other people!

biggest apt ever seen

This is the recently-completed tallest apartment building in Europe, which they are justifiably proud of, as I think it is very pretty for a newly-built skyscraper.

tallest apt in europe

As a side note, since most people live in apartment buildings, they don't have sprawling, endless miles of single-family-home suburbs. Their suburbs are apartment buildings. It's an interesting contrast to the US.
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