OK, I wrote this a few days ago before I left for the Golden Ring (which will be the next post).
The focus for today was the Kremlin. Unfortunately, I didn't find it nearly as impressive as I was expecting, in fact I was more impressed by the outside. Maybe two of the five churches inside being covered in scaffolding had something to do with it though. Costing even more was a visit to the Armoury, so I made sure I got my money's worth. It's where they keep all the booty the tsars used to collect: dresses, thrones, gold and silver dinner services, and anything else they could stick diamonds on. The collection includes some of the Fabergé eggs they used to exchange at Easter, which are pretty amazing. One had a tiny model train only about 10 cm long or less, but minutely detailed.
After that I finally got into the Red Square. I got a good look at St. Basil's this time, and also at the outside of Lenin's tomb, but it was too late so I'll have to go spit on him another day. Well, I won't, because that probably wouldn't be the sort of arrest I could get a nice holiday out of, but it's the thought that counts.
Later I went to the Pushkin Fine Arts Museum, because they allegedly have a very good collection of Impressionist, Van Gogh, and other stuff that I like. They didn't tell me that ALL of the rooms with these in were closed while they move. So instead I had lots of the older bleurgh, a decent Egyptian and Babylonian collection, thousands of Classical sculptures, which I quite enjoyed, and a special Rembrandt exhibition. The latter was actually pretty good, maybe I'm getting to like his style from repeated exposure, but also it included a room of just black and white ink sketches, which impressed me far more than his paintings.
1 comment:
Why spit on Lenin? He was pretty damn good at being a commie, although he could have done with a bigger beard, might have worked then.
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