Moscow, Day 1

I walked to the Red Square in a cold, grey drizzle, but even that couldn’t stop me from being impressed by its size and the colour of the buildings around it. The Red Square has been built with its own curvature, which makes it seem even bigger (and it really is big). In this picture, I’m some ways along it already.

After admiring the buildings, I went to the Kremlin – which has a slightly confounding ticketing system. To get into certain bits, you have to be there at specific times throughout the day. I wasn’t. I got in to see the cathedrals only, which were well worth the price of admission: a cluster of white buildings around a courtyard, each with numerous gilded domes.

My ticket got me inside all 3 pictured, which are phenomenally decorated: saints on the pillars, the Apocalypse and the Nativity and other Biblical scenes on the walls, a golden iconostasis in each, and more icons on the walls of some, and coffins of Tsars and Patriarchs. So much colour. Red and gold and blue and more.

Speaking of colours…

St Basil’s! Beautiful even in the rain. From the downstairs iconostasis, there’s a narrow staircase with huge steps that takes visitors up to a higher level, with many rooms and passageways, all decorated in the most beautiful ways.

I could have wandered through those passageways forever.

Instead I went back to my hostel, thinking that I would relax for a while before setting off to Yaroslavskiy Station to buy my train ticket to Yaroslavl – but it then occurred to me that I’d probably enjoy the metro a lot more if I went before rush hour. As it happened, my route took me through two of the most impressive stations.

Novoslobodskaya, which has these beautiful stain glass windows all along both platforms:

Komsomolskaya, which is more like a grand, luxurious ballroom than a metro station:

Ticket acquired, I returned to my hostel – and finally succumbed to travel-tiredness and napped, after which I felt even worse. But I got up, ate dinner, and afterwards read the entirety of Ursula Le Guin’s The Tombs of Atuan, the second Earthsea book and so far my favourite of the quartet (I’m now halfway through the third book). I’ve only just started reading Le Guin’s work, and I could just roll about in bits of her worldbuilding like a cat in particularly lovely dust. Earthsea is such fun to read.

Coming up! The State Historical Museum and Izmaylovo Market (which belongs in a fairytale, surely). Today is a transit day: soon I’ll be off to the station to locate my train to Yaroslavl, where I’ll meet my brother, who’s studying there.