Red Square

Finally, the day for to visit the historic Red Square has arrived. I was so very excited, as this was the attraction i  was hyped up to visit from the beginning of the adventure. We started the day on time and managed to reach the Kremlin ticket counter by 10am. To my severe disappointment, Ivan the Terrible’s Tower was not open to tourists. This was one of the main attractions so i was quite let down. Nevertheless, there was a lot to cover and we were on our way. We started with the visit to the Kremlin Armoury. The armoury was the exhibit that showed ancient artefacts that were intricately linked to Russia’s long past.The tour had so many amazing things such as faberge eggs, jewel-adorned gospels, ancient Russian armour and Weapons as well some amazingly well-preserved horse carriages that even Catherine the Great used to ride in!  It was well worth the entrance ticket (which was not cheap). After this exhibit, we proceeded to visit the various Cathedrals and Tsar Cannon in Kremlin’s Cathedral Square. We visited Cathedrals such as Cathedral of the Dormition, Cathedral of the Archangel, and Cathedral of the Annunciation, the Palace of Facets, the Church of the Deposition of the Robe,  the Church of the Twelve Apostles and  took many photos with the Tsar cannon. It was a long few hours appreciating the clearly ancient buildings as well as the beautiful and detailed artwork within as well as outside the monuments. Honestly, i had not expected anything of this nature when reading about the various cathedrals, so i was thrilled. After some photo-taking, we were forced to say goodbye to the Kremlin (which was very hard to do as no one wanted to exit the gate HAHA) to visit the other sites of Red Square. The stunning part of exiting the Red Square was that we were immediately treated the majestic St Basil’s Cathedral. To me, i was at a lost for words. I had never seen anything like it. I spent some time just standing there and staring at what was possibly the highlight of my trip. After a good 45 mins, we headed to see the inside of St Basil’s Cathedral which was similar to the other Cathedrals inside the Kremlin, Old and Majestic. After all the heavy sights we saw, we decided to look for lunch at the famous GUM. While the name might be misleading, GUM is not a reference to our mouths but is a huge shopping mall in Red Square which had every designer brand one could think off. While we had no interest in such brands, there was a particularly famous ice cream cart in GUM that we wanted to visit. It was no issue finding the cart as we simply followed the people walking from a central area with ice cream cones in their hands HAHA. The ice cream was so good, we all had a second round on leaving GUM. After this we decided to visit the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Similar to the one in USA, this was a monument of the 26.6 million men and women who died fighting evil in WW2. I was a little ticked off at people constantly taking selfies at the sight as it was a solemn tribute to the heroes (i took one or two photos and that was it). It took some time but we eventually said goodbye to Red Square and headed to see the Bolshoi Theatre which was on our walk home. Just like the Kremlin, it was huge and beautiful. It was not excessively adorned with artwork or anything of that nature. It was just simple, huge and magnificent. After our sightseeing had come to an end we visited a local bar for a short time before heading to our favourite restaurant called My-My (yes that was actually it’s name). It was a little pricey in some ways but overall it was decently priced and allowed us to try traditional Russian food. After My-My, we took a walk back to our hostel to cap an awesome day in Moscow.