Moscow Day 2 - the Kremlin

13 October
Day 2 Moscow

I slept really well and didn't get up til after 10 this morning.  Very rare for me!  The bed at this hostel is very comfortable.

Today's plan is pretty simple - visit the Kremlin.

So I head towards Red Square then have to search the Internet to find the entrance and ticket gate for the place.  I just assumed the entrance would be via Red Square but it is not!  You have to go down to Alexandrov Park where there is a big ticket office and the entrances.

The ticketing system for the Kremlin is pretty stupid.  There are 4 things you can buy tickets for.

The two I was interested in are the main Kremlin complex and the Armoury.  The Kremlin complex is easy - you can either stand in line at the ticket window or go use one of the vending machines.  Simple.

The Armoury only sells tickets to sessions and you can only buy a ticket to the next available session and only from the ticket booth.

For example:
If I had arrived at 8am I would have only been able to buy tickets for the 8am session until that sold out, then I could only buy tickets for the 10.30am session until that sold out.

Very stupid system.  You basically have to dedicate a day to the Kremlin because you don't know what session you're going to be in until you get there.

I arrived at the ticket office about midday assuming I would be able to get into the 1pm session.  However the 1pm tickets were sold out so I could only buy tickets for the 4.30pm session that day.

A bit annoying but fine.  I went to the main Kremlin complex and looked around in there.  It's basically a set of cathedrals you can go into, a giant cannon and, a giant bell, a small archaeological dig and a bunch of buildings you cannot go into (like the senate building or a theatre that you can't enter unless you're going to a show there).

There are some very beautiful structures in there with a lot of very old religious icons and such.  But I'm starting to get a bit cathedral'd out.  They are all pretty much the same.  Big gold domes, lots of paintings inside, lots of icons and a big wall of religious pictures (it had a special name but I forget what it is).  Beautiful sure but not really any different to each other.

So I kicked around in there for a while doing the tourist bit.  One of the most amusing parts was watching the guards chase after people who weren't walking on the designated walking paths.  There were guards EVERYWHERE and they all had whistles.  If you walked across a square instead of along the path they would blow their whistle and stride towards you with rage in their eyes.  Fun to watch tourists being scared back into line.

Had some time to kill before the armoury exhibit so I had a late lunch then headed back to the entrance.  Except the entrance was closed.  I got there about 5pm and the guards weren't letting people in!  I showed them my ticket and asked if I had the right gate and all they said was "Closed".  GRR!

So I went down to the ticket office and found an information desk and the very friendly woman there tells me the Armoury is actually accessed via a different gate at the other end of the park and that I only had about 45 minutes before it would actually be closed if I wanted to see it.

The signage around here is terrible!  I only saw 1 sign for the armoury and that was on the opposite side of the ticket office from which I'd approached it.  Even when I got to the gate there was no sign to indicate what this entrance was for.  Very frustrating.

Another lot of those tourists who didn't seem to have eyes and had to be hand held through the security checkpoint.  I rolled my eyes at them and the guard had a chuckle.  Must see that shit all day.

Got inside and the god damn door to the armoury museum was locked!  Thankfully I saw a couple of people exiting the building via a door labelled "Staff Only" so I went in there and the woman took my ticket with a stern warning that the museum would only be open for another 30 minutes.  I'm not one of those people who can spend days looking at a museum (ahem ... Maile) but without really knowing how big it is 30 minutes doesn't seem like enough time even for me.

So I start tearing through the museum having only a cursory look at a lot of things I would have liked to have spent a bit more time on.

I headed straight for the top floor first assuming that's where the good stuff would be and there was a selection of really nice metalwork ... Gold, silver, copper and steel.  There are chalices, decorative stuff, a good (but small) selection of weapons (both steel and firearms) & armour and a huge selection of gold covered bibles.  That seems to be a large focus of the museum and I can see why ... there really is some spectacular stuff there simply because religion was a driving force of society at the time.

I finish up top then head to the bottom floor where they have a completely different style of stuff.  There is a lot of old gowns and other clothing the nobles of the time used to wear, ornamental wear for horses and a fantastic room full of carved carriages and sleds.  Some of the carriages were absolutely fantastic and must have taken months to make.

Overall I managed to get through it in about 20 minutes.  It's really not that big.  It wasn't worth going back up to spend 5 minutes on the stuff I would have liked to see a bit more of so I made do with what I'd seen.  I probably would have liked and extra 20 minutes or so but I don't think I would have needed a full hour.

On the way out I visited Vladimir the Great.  The statue is pretty impressive but I was more into the friezes behind him.  I'm a bit of a sucker for a good frieze and these ones are beauties.  The one on the left particularly seemed to pop because the light rain made it seem like the horse was sweating.

My final stop for the day promised to be a bit of fun.

While I was looking for interesting things to do in Moscow I came across the Museum of Soviet Arcade Machines.  Basically some dude has bought and restored a bunch of old arcade machines from the 80s and 90s and you can go in and play them.  It was pretty awesome.  For the entry price of 400 Rubles you get 15 tokens to spend on games and each game costs 1 token each.

They had a whole variety of games from car racing games, submarine games, shooting stuff, platform stuff and some tabletop sports stuff (like foozball).  Probably 50 odd games all up.

It was great fun!  They gave me a sheet with some instructions but I decided to try and figure out how to play the games myself.  Challenging when any buttons and instructions on screen are only in Russian!

And I'm sure some of the games don't work properly.  Nothing happens when you hit buttons or they don't respond in real time.  Or maybe I'm just shit.

I think my favourite was a sort of puzzle platform game.  You had to jump over or run under or jump on obstacles being thrown at you by a wizard.  Another interesting one was a fire engine game where you had to drive the fire engine to the end of the road as quickly as possible (dodging cars) then use the fire hydrant to try and put out all the fires in the building before time ran out.

Unfortunately nobody wanted to play "Kiddie rides cock" with me despite all the children around.  I put it down to the language barrier.

If you're ever in Moscow it's a fun way to spend an hour or two.  There are a few multi player games in there as well which would have been fun to try with another person.