Day 5: Moscow in Russia Travel Log

This was the first day we had an early start, because we had to squeeze in a morning excursion before leaving Moscow in the afternoon to get to Uglich in afternoon the next day. We left around 9:30am to the Red Square again, but this time to get inside the Kremlin grounds. The line into Kremlin was insanely long - we spent an hour waiting in line to get in - but we found out later that that was an anomaly; turned out there weren’t enough guards stationed at the security checkpoints. My mom said her local guide talked to the security and got more people stationed at the checkpoints, and things improved. By the time we came out it looked like it was only a 30 minutes wait rather than an hour.

The Kremlin itself was impressive. I enjoyed walking around the grounds very much. We went into one church (Church of Ascension) where the tour guide explained a lot of details to us which we could have just looked from from Wikipedia. But that gave us an excuse to linger in it longer. (The place was crowded). We then went to the Armory - that was easily the highlight of the day. We saw a lot of state treasures - old coronation gowns, carriages, gifts from foreign states, and old crowns. All-in-all it was a great visit, though I wonder if we could have had more time if it wasn’t for the commute back to the ship.

We got back for lunch at 2:30 and the ship started sailing immediately. We had lunch, and went to a “tea time” at 3:30 (barely any time to digest lunch food), a history talk at 4, an excursion talk at 5, and a welcome toast at 6. There were a few times when we were left by ourselves, and without a large group, it was easier to get to know other people on the cruise. There was a widower who is travelling with her 25-year-old grandson (whom she didn’t seem impressed with), a couple who had done several Viking cruises before (and were explaining to us what they liked and not), a couple from London ON who asked us to teach her to set her ipad’s alarm (according to her all “young people” are good with technology). Because we were travelling with our parents, it was harder to get opportunities to know other travellers, so it’s nice to be separated for some functions.

We technically only had a morning activity, but everybody are tired. The ship won’t dock tomorrow till 2pm, so hopefully we will be recovered by then. From this point on till St. Petersburg, we should be visiting small towns only (Yaroslavl is an exception), so we probably don’t get as exhausted for a week.

Last updated March 29, 2020