Another day in the capital was a day of touristy work too. We decided to have a late morning after the exhausting day of visiting the red square. The hotel duped us by mentioning free breakfast which turned out to be an expensive bill. Well at least I had a solid meal.

We wanted to explore some of the other sights and an English speaking sales lady recommended a bunch of museums and art galleries near the river. We were heading in the general direction and found a grand church – church of the Christ. It was well worth the effort and time spent to get there.

The rest of the day was spent visiting a handicraft centre and we picked up some impressive memoriblia and antiques. I should say, the Moscow visit was the most touristy visit to a town in a long while.

What I did find extremely impressive is the metro system. Though the place is typically in Russian, I started navigating around after the 2nd ride. Color coded and well marked exits make it a breeze to move around. The circle line drops the travel time heaps. The stations seem very old, the trains noisy and dirty from people walking in and out of snow. But it seems to me that the system is a lot more impressive than Singapore. There are no unnecessary and repeated warnings to the passengers and no restrictions on what to do. But the system runs, and runs efficiently.

People are extremely courteous and the metro seems like the place to get together. Lots of hugging and kissing adds a very romantic vibe to the town. A lot of people carry flowers and every corner seems to have a florist selling bouquets.

The highlights are also the stations. Each one of them have a unique design from the lights to murans, statues, tile work and stained glass. The place seems more organically put together and that is cool.

The schedules are impressive too, we never had to wait for more than 2 minutes for a train and never travelled more than 30 mins to get from one corner to another. Impressive for a large town like Moscow. The teains were so frequent that there was never enough time to gather people to make the cars congested.

The best part is that ge fares are a flat rate per ride and cheap at 25 rubles (1 sgd). I think that there are a lot of lessons to be learned from here on setting and running a train network. I am impressed and sad that Singapore pales in comparison.

Well those are the observations and rants. On the chick watch log, Moscow girls like thier friends elsewhere dress fashionably (not expensive, but stylish) I like that about Russia. People are colder, but I chalk that to big town paranoia.

I like this town and would not mind living here either.what with all the hot girls walking around and the history to explore here.

Hopped back on the train now to officially complete the Trans-Siberian on sleeper and heading to St.Petersburg.

Related posts:

1. Moscow – Day 1
2. Vici on my mind
3. St.Petersburg – End of an epic

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 24th, 2010 at 3:48 am and is filed under Russia, Trans-Siberian, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.