Fall Break Day 2: CIRCUS

Arriving in Moscow it was cold and wet, with snowy slush everywhere. Being such a large city, they don't have time to clear the sidewalks and streets of snow, so it was a mess. We traveled by foot and metro to our home for the next two nights, the Gozilla Hostel. The Moscow metro is probably the most spectacular in the world. Unfortunately we were not allowed to take pictures in the stations, but if you want to see some pictures of it, clink here. After dropping our stuff off at the hostel, we ventured out into Moscow to find the modern shopping mall for lunch. I ate some traditional Russian fast food. Lindsey, Kim and I went on an adventure to find Starbucks. We ordered some extremely over priced coffee with the help of an English speaking young man. When I got my cup, it said Джули written on the side, which is my name in Cyrillic! Good thing I learned the Russian Alphabet, or I would have had know idea what it said! Being able to read Russian was so much fun. Even if I had no idea what the word meant, reading it is was at least fun! Several stores and shops had familiar English words just written in Cyrillic, which made me feel like I could actually read and understand Russian! Even though it was raining/snowing we went to Red Square and prepared for our tour of the Kremlin. 

It was pretty windy and miserable, but we were all just really excited to be in Russia! In this picture you can see one tower of the Kremlin, and Saint Basils in the background. Our 3 hour tour of the Kremlin included the armory museum, and orthodox church, and some outdoor monuments. Our tour guide was really sweet and we got head sets so she didn't have to yell over the crowds of people in the museum. We only lost one person, so it was a good day. We found her with in half an hour, so it wasn't too bad. After the tour was finished we all headed to the Russian Circus performance. We had groups of 8 people so that we could travel easier and quicker. We were following the group in front of us, but Christy lost her group and we waited back to help her find them. When we couldn't find them we continued on with our adopted new member of our group. So we get to the circus right at 6, when it is supposed to be starting. We push through the line of people waiting to get in and proudly present our tickets, only to get pushed away. The lady yells something at us in Russian. Thankfully our group leader is a native Russian speaker, and she was able to determine that we were at the WRONG circus. The lady told us which metro stop we needed and sent us on our way. We finally got to the REAL circus 45 minutes later.

Our group was very excited to be there! We only missed the dog show and the horse show, and made it just in time for the kangaroo show. The circus theme was a trip around the world, and each area of the world had a different animal. They had polar bears, seals, parrots, camels, cheetahs, and acrobats dressed as frogs.

It was a pretty neat show, from what we were able to experience. Definitely an experience to remember. To continue this story check out Fall Break Day 3: SAINT BASILS.