MOSCOW

FIRST STOP -- MOSCOW!!

We loaded the bus at midnight on April 10 and headed for the Salt Lake Airport. We connected through the JFK airport in NYC with no time to spare. We arrive in Moscow Sunday morning, April 12. We had lunch and dinner in our hotel, the "Vega", slept, and explored the nearby museum and marketplace. The museum guide said that she'd never had a group like ours, even though she's had many groups come through. She said that she would never forget us (in a good way)!

On Monday, we had a driving tour of Moscow with our guide Tanya. We visited Red Square, saw the Kremlin, but didn't get to go inside Lenin's tomb since it was closed due to a holiday. We did some souvenir shopping at the panorama viewpoint of Moscow, and went to the venue to get ready for our first show.

The Moscow mission president, and several missionaries were in the audience. Brother Felt had explained before the show that at the end the audience would probably start clapping in unison during the final bow. And -- that's exactly what happened, along with a standing ovation. This started a perfect record of ovations for the rest of the tour!

On Tuesday we toured the Tretyakov art gallery. This was our first time to do a "coat check" and we soon found out that almost everywhere we went we would be checking our jackets and sometimes our bags. We had lunch on Red Square, explored the beautiful Metro stations, and had our first Russian McDonald's experience. Pointing and hand signs go a long way in ordering a Big Mac and fries.Thankfully their menu boards include a lot of pictures! After dinner we attended the Russian Ballet "Giselle" at the National Theatre inside the Kremlin. It was fabulous, at least what we saw of it. Jet Lag was still a factor, and after walking around all day... well, those seats were pretty comfy, and when the lights went down...

After the ballet we boarded the overnight train headed for St. Petersburg.