fly to Moscow

A short flight on Lithuanian airline and we were in Moscow. It was very interesting to see all the Soviet built apartment complexes from the air. There would be a clulster of them sort of in the middle of nowhere, and then there would be another cluster a distance away, and another, and so on. I don't think I have seen anything like it before. Then we landed and went on a bus which took us from the airplane to the terminal. Somebody was going to take a photo and was told by some uniformed guy it was not allowed! It was interesting that on the airplane we got the entry cards for Russia to fill out, the form was only in Russian, so I had some fun trying to look up the words in the glossary of the Russian book I brought with me. I took one year of Russian in college, so at least I still remember the alphabets, although not very capable of much else. At the airport, they did have a sample of the form filled out and explained in English, so you wouldn't be completely out of luck. After everyone got out of the customs, we collected out luggages and were met by our local guide and bus.

As we left the airport, we would see some cars parked off the side of the road on the other side,  the driver would be standing around, maybe talking on his cellphone. It looked curious. Our guide told us people just park where they want, so they didn't have to pay for parking at the airport.

The traffic got heavier as we got closer to the city. There were 10 million people living in Moscow, and 4 million cars! We passed some huge store all lit in neon lights, supposed to be a furniture store! And then we saw onioin domes in gold, and some of Lenin's seven sisters, which were their version of skyscrapers built in the early Soviet times as apartments. I thought they looked rather interesting, much more so than the concrete block apartment buildings many other cities had for apartments.

I love the gold domes of all these cathedrals, so it was a real treat to see them! We had a drive-by look at the St Basil's Cathedral in the distance and the Kremlin walls before arriving at our hotel.