We have been in Moscow 5 days and have left this impressive city. This morning, we were all discussing whether we would recommend Moscow to folks and decided that we would. However, this is probably a city for a one time visit and with heavy caveats. As grand as this city is, its 20% per year inflation rate renders most things undoable for the average tourist or unlivable for the average Moscovite.

The city's residents seem to be well dressed, but all may not be what it seems. We love to travel to learn more about everything alien to our normal sphere of reference and to broaden our understanding of others. Sometimes that means deepening our knowledge of current affairs, food, culture, modern history or a bit of ancient history. When I write these trip blogs up, I try to bring my trip to life to retain the memories but to also add some perspective of the country and the people.

I think I'll start historically and bring us into the current environment and hope to keep it interesting.

As with any European country, Moscow was founded about 900 years ago as a feudal castle within a walled city with a moat around its walls. These walls are the walls we now refer to as the kremlin (which just means fortress) and are triangular in shape. As opposed to other cities of its time, everyone, not just the royal family, could live there. As the city grew, however, circular walls continued to be built around the original kremlin. Later on, these walls were replaced with ring roads.

Now, the Moscow River runs through the city and a tremendous amount of city life exists along the river just like in New York, London and Paris...dinner cruises, boat cruises, amusement parks etc. And you have to readjust your perceptions -- the famous Gorky Park of spy book fame is just a children's amusement park.

I always pictured the kremlin as a harsh militaristic place. It isn't. It is more like a walled in Central Park. It houses a modern shopping mall, a church complex, a cathedral, Stalin's and Lenin's resting places among others', government offices, museums, parkland, Red Square (which becomes a skating rink in the winter), and a presidential palace. It's a joyful place. We always called the Communists "the reds". Well, red means beautiful in Russian. So, Red Square means Beautiful Square.

We broke up into different tour groups to see the kremlin. We opted for the most active group, labeled the yellow group. The slowest group was labeled the pink group and there were all sorts of assorted colors in between the two groups. For some reason, our bus combined the pink and yellow groups, but we did break out into two different groups for the walking bits. Yesterday, we didn't walk too much, but mostly took a riding city tour, had an hour to ourselves in Red Square and had a boat ride. Later on in the afternoon, we visited an art museum and Sparrow Hill. It seemed that no matter whether you were in the fast or slow group you went at the same speed. However, for some reason today the pink group didn't show up? We think we killed off the pink people.


So, what were all these sites we saw and learned about yesterday?
Moscow was settled in the 1100's and became the capital in the 1500s. Eventually, the Kremlin took its rightful place as the home of the royal residence until 1918 when the Bolsheviks closed it down to the public until Stalin opened it back up again in the 1950s. As a first stop, we had the opportunity to visit the GUM Mall if we wanted or anything else in the kremlin.

To give you some background: The Gum department store in Red Square was built in 1893 in the "eclectic" style with a glass roof and elegant marble balustrades and it is prominent at the entrance of the Red Square. We were given an hour to wander around Red Square. Now, Brad, Leslie, Doug and I had been here for a couple of days and had been able to wander around the square and had been to St. Basil's and the Diamond Fund, but not to the main GUM. When we arrived Sunday morning, all of the square has been fenced off in preparation for a concert next month. The Diamond Fund was closed and all there was to do was wander through GUM. (Russian: ГУМ, pronounced as goom, as abbreviation of the Russian: Главный универсальный магазин Glavnyi Universalnyi Magazin, meaning "main universal store") is the name of the main department store in many cities during the Soviet Union years. We all wanted to see this famous store because of it's past.

So, a little history for you...By the time of the Russian Revolution of 1917, the building contained some 1,200 stores. After the Revolution, the GUM was nationalized and continued to be used as a department store until Joseph Stalin converted it into office space in 1928 for the committee in charge of his first Five Year Plan. After the suicide of Stalin's wife Nadezhda during 1932, the GUM was used briefly to display her body. After reopening as a department store during 1953, the GUM became one of the few stores in the Soviet Union that did not have shortages of consumer goods, and the queues of shoppers were long, often extending entirely across Red Square. At the end of the Soviet era, GUM was partially then fully privatized, and it had a number of owners before it ended owned by the supermarket company Perekryostok. During May 2005, a 50.25% interest was sold to Bosco di Ciliegi, a Russian luxury-goods distributor and boutique operator. As a private shopping mall, it was renamed in such a fashion that it could maintain its old abbreviation and thus still be called GUM. However, the first word Gosudarstvennyj ('state') has been replaced with Glavnyj ('main'), so that GUM is now an abbreviation for "Main Universal Store".

It is still open nowadays, and is a popular tourist destination for those visiting Moscow. Many of the stores feature fashionable brand names familiar in the West; locals refer to these as the "exhibitions of prices", the joke being that no one could afford actually to buy any of the items displayed. I can attest to that. We found that, while the stores were the same as ours, the prices were two to three times that of our NYC retail prices. In fact, our guide told us that tour companies frequently arrange shopping trips to Turkey or Egypt because it is cheaper to travel abroad to buy clothes than to purchase here. We were told that the higher you go in the mall, the cheaper things get. It didn't help. I bought some tea bags and some beef sticks and we discussed amongst ourselves how the Moscow infrastructure could support this ridiculously expensive mall.

We have been been blessed with weather in the mid to high 70s and a lunchtime boat ride was next in store for us. The mix of modern buildings with classical with Stalininistic Architecture is quite impressive. I never grasped the magnitude of Stalin's Seven Sisters...currently two hotels, one office and the rest residences. When Marc Levin suggested we visit one of these places, I hadn't a clue what he was talking about, so we never ventured over to the Hilton. Now I understand. These buildings are what ine thinks of when you think of 50s USSR but never of such a magnificent magnitude. These buildings are the largest I have ever seen and are powerfully striking. So, what are they?

The "Seven Sisters" is the English name given to a group of Moscow skyscrapers designed in the Stalinist style. They were built from 1947 to 1953. While each of these "skyscrapers" was built by a different architect, they look essentially the same? The are just as wide as they are tall and look like something out of ghostbusters. From the out side, they seem to have high ceilings and the decor is akin, but an exaggerated form of Rockefeller Center on a much grander scale. These buildings looked to be more 30s style than 50s.

Another stop was Sparrow Hill. Today, it is the home of the huge Stalin style university building which overlooks the city. The highest area in the city, And now a university area and cheesy vendors, the views of the city could have been those of any city and was hardly worth a visit.

It broke my heart that we missed the Pushkin, but, as part of our scheduled AMA tour, we did get to visit The State Tretyakov Gallery, which the Russians consider the national treasury of Russian fine art and one of the greatest museums in the world. It is located in one of the oldest directs of Moscow – Zamoskvorechye, not far from the Kremlin. The Gallery's collection consists entirely of Russian art and artists who have made а contribution to the history of Russian art or been closely connected with it. The collection contains more than 150 000 works of painting, sculpture and graphics, created throughout the centuries by successive generations of Russian artists. The little we saw was absolutely incredible. I think, in retrospect, I could have added on two days just for the Pushkin and this museum. While interesting, I would have replaced the cultural history museum we all visited on day one, which was too overwhelming.

This is the end of Moscow Day 3 of touring.