Moscow – East and West

We spent a week in Moscow before flying off to St. Petersburg. I have to say that, without the Moscow apps we had for our IPhones, we wouldn't have seen half of what we managed to see. Even then, a lot of the stuff we planned to do we just didn't have the time for on this visit. I have to give credit to whoever develops those apps – they saved us a huge amount of work and made getting around the city with its Cyrillic alphabet almost easy!

So, what did we manage during our week here? Don't worry; I won't bore you with a minute by minute description, just the highlights. So, here goes – our Moscow experience.

The iconic Red Square has been the center of the city for over six centuries. All around the square are lots of things to see and do including St. Basil's Cathedral with its amazing Russian architecture, Resurrection Gate and Lenin's Tomb.

The Kremlin, site for so many spy movies is a huge complex of landmarks and cathedrals. The Cathedral of the Assumption and the Cathedral of the Annunciation are fantastic structures dating back centuries. The State Museum, the oldest in Russia, houses an amazing collection of treasures including the Crown Jewels of the old Tsars.

We had tickets for the Bolshoi Ballet (Swan Lake) and a Russian opera (Boris Godunov). Both were an amazing experience especially in the surroundings of this magnificent, 2000 seat, theatre. Before each performance, we used our Moscow apps to find out about the productions so that when we saw them, we knew what was going on.

Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts is Moscow's largest museum of European art and has the most amazing collection. Even though we are both art buffs, the Moscow apps gave us a lot of background info on the paintings and the artists.

For me, a flight in a MIG-29 at the Nizhny Novgorod Aircraft site was an exhilarating experience – expensive but well worth the cost.

We did a lot more in Moscow, but for us, these were the highlights. This is a fascinating city of contrasts that is still developing after the fall of communism.