After leaving the splendid Slavyanka Hotel, we went to look at the Tambov cathedral and watched part of a service. There have been a couple of niggling problems with the van. The crack in the front offside wheel must have been getting wider because I was having to have the tyre pumped up almost every day, and the last engine oil change was 29,400 miles ago so the engine was sounding somewhat noisy. In one of those weird coincidences, we passed the first VW dealer I had seen for about 29,400 miles and went to ask about changing the oil. Mentioned the wheel and suggested the tyre could be put on the spare wheel. The lovely people at VW charged me $120 for the engine oil change (the special VW oil costs $10 a litre) and did the wheel for free. Took them three hours and the cost was perhaps a quarter it would have been in England.
This meant that we reached Moscow in the dark, but travelled without a hitch on the 10-lane Outer Ring Road, turning off at the right place down the 8-lane Shosse Entusiastov. Got to within half a mile of the hotel and, like a prat, turned off at the wrong place and found myself driving for 6 miles up the wrong side of the Shosse Entustiastov motorway. Eventually got on the right side and found the Andron Hotel with no problem. Warm, comfortable, clean and incredibly cheap for Moscow, the only problem being the paper-thin walls and a noisy couple in the next room.
On the 25th we got the metro from Rimskaya station to Okhotnyi Ryad to visit Red Square and the Kremlin. Went into a beautiful little church to watch a service and about 50 old crones bowing and crossing endlessly. Walking past a statue of Marshal Zhukov on a horse, we passed into Red Square with the Historical Museum behind us, the Kremlin walls on the right, the giant GUM department store on the left and the spectacular Pokrovskii Sobor (known in the West as St Basils) with its spectacular onion domes in the front.
St Basil was a lunatic (officially known as the “Fool for Christ”) who walked round Moscow in all weathers with only a loin cloth. He is buried where the church in his honour was built. The inside is covered in beautiful frescoes and we stopped, utterly spellbound, to hear a male quartet singing 15th century church music. After joining a long queue, we walked along the Kremlin wall where all the dead Soviet leaders (Chernenko, Andropov, Brezhnev, Krushchev and Stalin) are buried and past the memorial stones to some lesser figures such as WW2 generals and revolutionary figures including Frunze. Rather poignant was the stone to Mitrofan Nedelin, mentioned a few days ago. We then did the tour of Lenin’s Mausoleum, which Yeltsin had wanted to demolish, but Lenin is again being given the full guard of honour. Well on the way to rehabilitation.
We then (eventually) found the ticket office for the Kremlin and, after nearly leaving my phone behind at the security barrier (a policeman came running after us) walked past the Palaces of Congresses to the Anunciation Cathedral where all the Tsars tombs are kept including Ivan the Terrible. We then did a short tour of the Patriarchs Palace before the Kremlin closed and we were courteously thrown out.
