15 April: Breakfast at the Sovietsky, meet Dan, our guide, and we are off to see Moscow: Red Square, Lenin’s Mausaleum, KGB headquarters, the Kremlin, St. Basil’s Cathedral, the Armory and much more. Betty- Our guide Dan is an absolute wealth of information and knowledge. Our tour was more than we could have ever hoped for.
This evening, Jerry and Linda, Steve and Jennifer went to a market then to Red Square. Charlotte, Betty and I had dinner in the Sovietsky’s large formal dining room.
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Today is a lovely day. We went on a bus tour of the city with our new guide, Daniel. He pursued a degree in Russian studies to work in a museum, so he had a broad base of knowledge about Moscow and Russian art and history. We drove around Red Square and saw the buildings and the wall from several perspectives. We heard about the accomplishments and the abuses of many of the leaders of Russia up to present time. It was not easy to live in this country.
We saw the KGB buildings. Daniel commented that in the periods of glasnost and perestroika, the KGB has really resisted change and Putin is a former KGB officer. He describes their present government as “managed” democracy. Interesting.
I found a couple of HD t-shirts for the boys – not “official.” Also got a couple of matryoshka dolls for Sophie and Kaylee. Fran