I absolutely fell in love with Moscow. It’s one of those places where you can’t help but trip over history at every turn. It’s a city of enormous contradictions. Within a few yards of Lenin’s Tomb is some of the most expensive shopping in the world.
Daniel Silva
Moscow was everything I could have dreamed it and so much more. I could walk along a cobblestone streets for hours just looking at the world around me. The architecture is varied and breathtaking and the people seem to match. You walk on slanting streets behind the Bolshoi Theatre to the click of designer boots as elegant women in giant fur coats stride from Gucci to Prada, like flocks of expensive birds. Serious looking business men walk unmoved past the Kremlin as it glows burnt red in the twilight. Even the metro is enchanting, each station is different, some like a baroque ballroom with chandeliers and golden mouldings, others full of modern art.
We walked, we walked and we walked some more. Hours drinking in art and history at museums, feeling centuries of spirituality in cathedrals that shone with gold and sipping gallons of tea at every opportunity because, after all, it was minus seven and I’ve never been one to say no to a good cup of tea. And the tea in Russia is good. They take tea to another level, and the tea menu in cafes will easily be over a page long; black, white, green, red, berries, lemons, ginger, apples, citrus. Any combination of delicious flavours you could possibly imagine can be combined and served to you in elegant bone china.
All together my trip to Russia was more than I possibly could have dreamed and I owe it all to my friend Tatiana and her parents who took me to so many wonderful places and made me feel so welcome it was as if I had been in Russia for years. It was an experience i will never forget and I can’t wait to return, with better Russian skills and even more outrageous hats.
Hannah Cliff 