Saturday: Carnival, Market ,and Red Square at Night

The girls had a carnival at their school, so we all went and hung out for a while. The highlight was Chrissie and Monica throwing sponges at Chrissie's teacher. After that Monica and I went to the market to buy groceries. There were booths set up both inside and out. The cheese stalls had the special easter cheese, paskha, for the kulich bread in addition to the usual types of cheeses. All of the vegetables were very fresh; the lettuce came in a pot with the dirt and roots still attached. Pickles of every variety were in buckets. And it was all very expensive, not too surprising for the most expensive city in the world. Butchers were cutting meat in their stalls. I won't go into detail about this, but my pictures may give you a feel for it.



In the evening we were supposed to go on a tour which took us to different churches and explained the easter service to us. We arrived 8 minutes late to discover that they had left without us. Instead we took the metro to Red Square and walked around there instead.





















Walking in under the recently rebuilt Resurrection Gate, we went into the Kazan Cathedral and watched the priest chant for a while while people stood around praying and lighting candles.

Then we walked past the GUM shopping mall, outlined with thousands of lights. Lenin's tomb is in front of the GUM building; we plan to visit that at a later date. Another building we walked past was the Old Moscow Hotel done in two different styles of architecture. The architects had presented Stalin with 2 different options, and when he signed in the middle, they were afraid to choose. Instead they did one style on the right, and the other on the left. The facade of the original building is being changed, and they are making an exact replica by Red Square. And now a bunny trail I found while I was searching for the name of this building: Apparently the engineers found about a ton of explosives in the foundation of a hotel in Moscow when they were demolishing it. The explosives were placed there so that the building could be blown up if Hitler invaded. And the most interesting part is this quote which is now a copy of a copy: "The boxes held only explosives without detonators so there was no risk of an (accidental) explosion in the hotel," Yeah, right.









We walked across the square past St. Basil's Cathedral, and across the river. A wedding party drove up while we were getting ice cream. They were in a white limo with flowers on the grill and on top. The tradition is to visit various historical site with friends. The alcohol was flowing freely.: One of them actually fell over walking back to the car. We walked back across Red Square to the Bolshoi Theatre, actually a little difficult to see since it was being remodeled and then walked back to the metro and got home just before midnight.