Moscow Part 3: Red Square and the Kremlin

It’s big. Bigger than I had imagined. It’s also slightly sloped. (Moscow’s gentle hills are tiring after being spoiled by Saint Petersburg’s flatness.)

And in general – it’s rather impressive.

I’m a church junkie. Have some pictures of a church. The Church of Out Lady of Vladimir, I believe. Quite pretty.

After DEAD LENIN, we went through Saint Basil’s – which contains the first icon of

Saint Mary of Egypt that I’ve seen in Russia. Incidentally, whoever painted it wimped out and gave her a hair shirt.

Saint Basil’s is a warren of cramped stairwells, passages, and chapels. It’s also extremely beautiful and extremely surreal. Granted, the sort of heady, otherworldy sensation, might have been due to climbing up a spiral stairwell in which each stair was roughly a foot high – but it was

still an interesting effect.

Unfortunately, I have no pictures inside, as I didn’t chance it without a photo ticket. Also, I hate taking pictures in churches, because things don’t come out without a flash, and with a flash, you lose the ambience.

To the Kremlin.

I find it very Russian to have a flowerbed of decorative cabbage.

This is from the bridge you walk over to get to the Kremlin – after you go through a metal detector. Moscow loves metal detectors, by the way. I understand why you would have the at the Kremlin. At a hotel that isn’t even in the center of the city – not so much.

My cannon is bigger than your cannon.

Icon of Sophia, Divine Wisdom on the wall of a church in the Kremlin. Russia is groovy like that.

Always, always, look up. Yes. I played with the filter. No, I really didn’t take out much color. Russia’s like that. I think that’s why they have candy-colored churches.

Oh, yes, this is the Kremlin at night. Shot from the bridge. Pretty, pretty, pretty. Cold, cold, cold.