Moscow, cont.

I still haven't been in the Kremlin yet. I wanted to get around and see different parts of the city. I started in Red Square, where I watched the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. It happens every hour and always draws a crowd.



From there I walked down to see the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. This was built in 1997 for Moscow's 850th birthday.



I didn't go in because I wasn't wearing shorts. This picture was taken from a footbridge over the Moscow River. Looking one way there's a nice view of Kremlin walls, with St Basil's on the right.



Looking the other way you can see yet another of the bizarre visual juxtapositions that fascinate me so much: On the left is an immense statue of Peter the Great. In the center is a tour boat. And on the right is a giant building for Megafon, a mobile phone company.



The church is built on the site of the site of another church of the same name that was leveled by Stalin. He planned on replacing it with a giant Palace of Soviets, featuring a 100-meter statue of Lenin. But it was never started. I'm sad the church was built, because I would have preferred to see what it replaced: the world's largest swimming pool.

Then I took the subway outside of town to walk up Sparrow Hill for what are supposedly the best views of the city. The views weren't so great, but you can see the stadiums and arenas they built for the 1980 Olympic games.



The hills are near the Moscow State University, so a lot of students go down to the river to hang out and sunbathe, as you can see in this picture taken from the metro station.

Self-portrait: Red Square

Red Square was open to pedestrian traffic and it was a gorgeous sunny day, so I took some more pix. Here is Lenin's tomb with the reflection of yours truly in the bottom lefthand corner. (I'm the one holding the camera.)



I haven't been in St Basil's yet, but my gosh, what a magnificent building.



Legend the Terrible has it that Ivan the Terrible liked it so much that he had the architects blinded so they could never build anything so beautiful again. I guess he figured, "Heck, they're already calling me 'the Terrible,' so why not."

Here's another picture of the square in which you can sense the scale of it.