Moscow Kremlin

The afternoon was for the Kremlin and museums within. It was always going to be an expensive day. The ticket system is a shambles and online is no better. Virtually no information, different tickets need to be purchased from different locaions, long queues (sometimes to nowhere) and a lot of pissed off people (including Russians). We had done a reccy yesterday and read blogs about how to efficiently get tickets. For us it was quite organised.

Kremlin ($15 each) - Not a lot to see - about 1-2 hours. Basically churches and burial place of Tsars. Government buildings off course off limits.

Those Russian's had big balls

This is the massive bell that was dropped on delivery by ship

Note the last guy. His job is to pick up the shit.

Armoury ($22 each) - very impressive collection of treasures (very little armour infact). Around 2 hours to see.

Diamond Fund ($11 each) - impressive collection of jewels similar to Tower of London. Around 1 hour to see. No photos allowed, but heres one from the internet.

For anyone going -
Dont go early, you just stand in long queues. We arrived about 13:30.

Armoury Museum - Margaret got into the queue for the Armoury (the most popular museum). Not super obvious that these tickets are only sold from one of the 10 ticket booths. Yesterday the queue was out the building and more that an hour. At 1pm it was only 10 minutes. Tickets were not available on line and can only be purchased for a timed session in the day. 14:30 session. 700 Rub each

General tickets (so called Cathedral tickets) - At the same time Mike got the General entry tickets from a vending machine inside (that no body tells you about and has no queue). You just walk inside the ticket office, walk past all the queues and use the machine. 1000 Rub each

Diamond Fund - this is the trickiest ticket to obtain. Only small groups of 20 are allowed at restricted times during the day. There is usually an extremely long queue to buy tickets. We fluked tickets very easily. On the way out of the Armoury there is a place to but tickets with no queue. And we timed it perfectly for the 4pm session. 500 Rub each.

In summary - a lot of stress and stuffing around, but I guess it was worth it.

Dinner again at a Grabli (there are 10 branches).

A thoroughly exhausting 5 star day.