Day three of Moscow started early again!
The crew (composed of Maggie from the US, Miguel from Spain, Johan from Sweden, and Nick from Australia) and I decided to visit the free Lenin Mausoleum that is only open for 3 hours everyday. In order to get in the guide told us we needed to be there early because those who line up at 11am have zero chance of getting in because of the long lines, so around 9:30ish we all gathered and waited in line. The mausoleum opened at 10 and within 20 minutes we all went through security and visited the Mausoleum.

Walking in...

The security and the standard of behavior as the mausoleum is crazy! Nick and I barely stopped to take the picture below and were screamed at for stopping even though NO ONE was behind us. Then, we entered and we weren't even in the main room and Nick whispered and got shushed! We then entered the main room and there were military men in every corner and in the middle of the the room was Lenin, lying stuffed like the animals at the wild care... a little creepy if you ask me!
Apparently a couple of years ago a president decided to burry Lenin's body but then Putin came to power and he went against that decision saying that a reburial of Lenin would imply that people had witnessed false values during the soviet regime.


It literally took 15 seconds to enter and exit the mausoleum and then we walked by the tombs of some other important people from Russia... Of course everything was in Russian so we had no clue what we saw or who the people were, except for...

...STALIN! After his death, Stalin was actually embalmed and put next to Lenin. During his time in power Stalin was a dictator and responsible for the death of millions of people so a movement of "de-Stalinization" began and 3 years after his death the body was removed and buried outside Lenin's mausoleum. Also, all statues and images of Stalin were remove from around the country after his death so now you can barely see any of his images but Lenin's face is still seen all over the country.


From the mausoleum we walked down the street to... The Kremlin!

So... the Kremlin... I just thought the Kremlin was Putin's house but it is not!
The Kremlin is a complex with pretty much 3 parts: 1. Putin's office, 2. the armory chamber museum, 3. A whole lot of churches.
Putin's office of course is off limits and can't be visited, the museum costs 700rub ($12) and the church complex costs 500rub ($8.50) We made a unanimous decision to pay for the church complex which includes entrance to the grounds and the churches.

Johan and I didn't get the memo about wearing red!

 After going through security we were inside the Kremlin! how cool!
The churches were... nice! But they were churches so unless you are really into churches it was nothing special! (I must sound horrible to other people but honestly I've had enough of churches!)






The cool thing about the churches was that in every of them you could take a guide in your language and learn about what many of the paintings meant etc. I did it for the first but then lost interest so I quickly glanced at the churches and got out.

 To be honest I liked the outside better with the beautiful golden tops! So pretty!





 I was glad that the 5 of us were on the same page and tried to quickly go through the churches and then we walked away and went to take a picture of... Putin's work place! haha I think we were all wishing to see Putin on top of the Kremlin shirtless on top of a bear... Sadly it didn't happen! haha

A repeat selfie!

The Kremlin complex is absolutely beautiful!


We then walked to the gardens where a free tour guide once saw Putin going for a walk!



So... every time Mr. President is driven from point A to point B all the streets his car goes by are shut so he can go through and this created a lot of traffic in Moscow.  In order not to bother the beautiful people of the capital city he decided to get... not one, but TWO helicopters and build a helipad at the Kremlin... isn't that nice of him? Always putting the citizens first, how thoughtful!

During the free walking tour the day before the guide talked a little bit about Putin and his ratings in the country. She is not a Putin supporter but understands why Putin is liked, she shared that things were not good for many people and Putin at the beginning (like 17 years ago!) made things a little better and people still remember that. People still have the idea that he helped them back in the day and than life got better.
The guide said that the country as a whole is slowly changing, she said that 25 years ago tourists were not allowed in Russia, that she couldn't leave the country and that now although it's not the best democracy people are free to do things they couldn't before.

By the time we left the Kremlin we still had many hours of sunshine so we headed to the funniest place of all... Izmailovo market!


I still don't know what the place was meant to be but it looked like a soviet Disneyland. We got off the metro and Nick lead us with his super directions from the girl at his hostel. To be honest this Izmailovo market is in a very sketchy neighborhood but we heard it was a must see fake kremlin (and the cheapest place to buy souvenirs) so why not? As we approached it I thought I would hear theme park music fading away because their radio was running out of batteries (so hard to write what I am actually imagining... it's the kind of sound they play in movies when the main character arrives at an old theme park and something really wrong is about to happen.)


We passed through a parking lot and then it started to look prettier and more interesting...



Once inside there wasn't much to do, there were mainly businesses, a couple of shops, and some museum looking places. We did notice that a lot of people (like 3 couples!haha) were getting married and there were guests and all that but other than that there wasn't much to do so we sat for lunch and beers (well... I watched, no good vegetarian option here!)

Huge Matryoshka!

After our lunch stop we decided to go find the market to get some souvenirs. We started walking and all we found was an empty market, we started saying "maybe they already closed", "maybe it's closed today", "maybe it's permanently closed"... it was a little creepy to be honest but we kept on walking and then we finally found the market.



It was for sure the place to come and do some shopping! They had furry hats, pins, pens, pencils, magnets, cards, mugs with Putin shirtless on a bear, mugs with Putin shirtless on a bear and Trump (with a shirt, thank God!) on a lion, and my favorite... Trump on a bear with a furry Russian hat...






And they had ENDLESS numbers of matryoshkas, different colors, different designs, different sizes, different prices... It was matryoshka heaven!




Trump matryoshka anyone? (Sorry Tiffany, you are not part of the Trump Matryoshka family!)

I loved how they put Ivanka before DTJr and on her own!

After some shopping we headed back to the metro for a Moscow metro tour because just like SPB Moscow had some amazingly beautiful metro stations!

Picture from Johan

I don't know what it says but I think harassment is not OK in Moscow's metro!

Metro entertainment!

This time I dragged everybody on the Andrea metro tour and since we had ran out of time during the day we visited the metro during peak hour... not my best idea! (My friend Eleonora sent me a post about the nice metro stations so we decided to follow it.)

Moscow is trying to make their metros tourist friendly by starting to translate them to english!

Well, actually we started the tour after the Kremlin and checked some stations on our way, the first one...  started our tour in: Arbatskaya

Arbatskaya Station

This station has the 2nd largest platform in Moscow at 250m long and is 41 meters deep. It was originally meant to serve as a bomb shelter and its decorated with beautiful chandeliers.




Our next stop was one station later in the blue line: Ploshchad Revolutsii

Ploshchad Revolutsii station

This station has a total of 76 sculptures! The sculpture represents different people and some of the sculptures are believed to bring good luck. While on the metro I told the crew where we where going and Nick said "Oh! that's the station with the dog and the soldier!" and it was, apparently if you rub the dog's nose it brings you good luck. It was funny to stand there and see the hundreds of people who walked by and rub the nose while passing.



Our next stop on the blue line was: Elektrozavodskaya

Elektrozavodskaya station

This station was named after the light bulb factory nearby. This station has 318 light bulbs on the ceiling.



The final stop on the blue line was at the station we had to get out for Izmailovo market: Partizanskaya

Partizanskaya station

Nothing really special about this one other than it was massive and had a huge soviet statue on top of the stairs.

After spending a couple of hours at the Izmailovo market we went to the metro for rush hour fun!
We got back in the blue line and then switched to the circle line to check out 6 more stations!

First stop: Taganskaya

Taganskaya station

The main theme os this station is war and depict the men of the red army.

The next station was : Komsomolskaya

Komsomolskaya Station

Always metro police in all the stations!

 This station depicts the Russian fight for independence and freedom.

From there we continued to : Prospekt Mira

Prospekt Mira Station

Such a beautiful station with chandeliers and white all around!

Next stop: Novoslobodskaya 

Novoslobodskaya Station

This is such a beautiful station with stained glass windows and a beautiful mosaic mural.

From there we moved to: Belorusskaya

Belorusskaya Station

 This white metro station depicts the life of Belarusian people






By then I was exhausted but we only had two more stops to go!
Next up... Krasnopresnenskaya

Krasnopresnenskaya Station

 The central theme of this station is the revolutionary movement of 1905 and 1917.



And finally the last stop: Kievskaya 
 This station is for both the blue and brown lines. Both of these stations represent the friendship between Russians and Ukrainians; the blue line has beautiful mosaics

Kievskaya Station

On my last day I went to Novodevi Monastery with Miguel and Johan. We took the metro there and when we got to the entrance we saw that tourists had to pay and since pretty much 90% of Moscow is under construction and this monastery was no exception we decided to just walk around the swan lake and get some pictures.

Modern Moscow in the back.

Miguel in the bus

From there I went for a nap and met then back on Arbat street and finally for a sunset walk around Gorky park... the best end to my visit in Moscow!

Arbat street, pedestrian street with tons of shops!

Souvenir shops all around!

Gorky park sunset!

I really truly under estimated the beauty of Russia and it definitely made it to my come back list!