Last day in Moscow

Had coffee and breakfast near our hotel, before walking to Red Square. Security was high and you had to pass through metal detectors. The police were blatantly profiling people and we were invited to the front and briefly searched before being allowed through. Makes sense as we surely do not look like a threat.

Stalin at Red Square

Putin

We visited the Armery in the Kremlin where all the fine jewels, clothing and carriages are displayed. Very beautiful but no photos allowed. We tried to visit the Kremlin afterwards but being new year it had closed early.

Communist building, 1 of the 7 Stalin had built

Our last view of Red Sq and the Kremlin

Had an early dinner near our hotel and then did some grocery shopping.

We are now off to catch the Trans Siberia train!

The Moscow underground had only cyrlic so it was a challenge, but with some help from locals we navigated our extended route to go past the stations marked as beautiful in our guide books. We didn't get off, but looked from he train.
Found our way to the train station and waited on the platform for maybe two hours . There were two dogs to keep me entertained at least. They were obviously cared for by the station staff and one was quite obese. I think the guy said this was from being castrated, but maybe I misunderstood.
The train arrived and we boarded.

There was a Dutch couple in the coupe next to us, and we were the only people on our coach, other than the two conductors . I couldn't work out if there was 1 or 2 per coach. We settled in and had some of our salmon and bread for supper. Unlike in SA, Salmon seems to be considered one of the cheaper fish in Russia.

Our luxury coupe, with some alcohol chocolates we bought called bear bar, in shapes of bottles

Our shower, shared with the Dutch couple . It is between the two couple's, opening from each side and you lock their side when you are using it.

It was a spectacular way to leave Moscow with fireworks going off for our departure, or maybe for New Year. Sad to have missed being in Moscow for them but at least we saw some.
Roy and I decided to go look around and find some fun, so we headed towards the dining car and the shared coupes. We found just what we were looking for, some Berliners. We joined them for a drink, and got an invitation to their New Years party. We went back for a second bottle of red and I had an obligatory swig of vodka. Some others joined the party and at midnight champagne was popped and shared and we had one of the nicest New Years parties ever!

We finally headed off for bed at about 2.