According to Sue - where would we be without her and her well-thumbed Lonely Planet - obtaining tickets can take an inordinately long time, often due to tour guides jumping the queue and purchasing tickets for their followers, so we needed to arrive early to guarantee our top picks. She was right and she was wrong. There was not a large queue, just an impossibly obstructive ticket clerk, who had a smattering of English - and I mean hello and no (we would have understood those in Russian) - and it took a quarter of an hour to establish that we couldn't buy tickets for the Armoury until 11.15, and there were only two tickets left for the Bell Tower, although we could visit some cathedrals. We did run into the tour-guide problem trying to get into the Diamond Room at the Armoury though, and it was infuriating. It took us half-an-hour to gain entry, despite starting off at the head of the queue. So, if you are planning to visit the Kremlin, allow more than a day, bring a hip flask and a stiff upper lip.
You'll also need a good pair of shoes. There are no eateries of any description in the museums, and virtually no seats upon which to rest your weary legs - at least, we could find none.
If you have time to do only one cathedral make sure it is The Annunciation. There isn't a spare wall, a pillar or a part of the ceiling that isn't covered with stunning frescoes or paintings. Like everything in Russia, or so it seems, the scale of it is vast. You can get up close and personal to the frescoes - at least those that aren't forty feet up. I can't imagine why there aren't please-don't-touch signs everywhere but there you go: you can't get a ticket until the right time or have a seat until the right time but you can touch a five-hundred-year-old fresco.
The Cathedral of Annunciation:
We must have spent a good half hour in the cathedral then the sound of a brass band drew us outside. It was Saturday (noon) and the Presidential Regiment in all its glory was parading on the square - a bit like the Changing of The Guard but obviously more spectacular because we were in a foreign country... The displays on horseback were particularly impressive. (There's something incredibly sexy about a man in uniform astride a well-manicured horse.)
Men on horseback:
To tell the truth, the Armoury was a bit of a let down. There were some wonderful displays of ceramics and glassware dating back to the Renaissance but the Faberge Eggs we had so looked forward to seeing turned out to be a mere handful in a single case with about a hundred people (twenty-five of them tour guides) crushed like squashed flies against the glass. There was a lot of harumphing and sharp-elbowing going on. The Diamond Room was also less than we had hoped for but then there was so much bureaocratic hoop-la involved in gaining entry to the exhibition that we were a little soured by the time we actually got in. Oh, and then we couldn't get out until the right time...
Obviously, we must put in a word about Red Square. I think all of us had these images engraved in our minds of granite-faced men in macs watching endless waves of tanks and goose-stepping soldiers, usually under grey and forbidding skies so it was something of a revelation to see a square flanked by the Edwardian splendour of GUM on one side and book-ended by these wonderfully coloured and golden-domed churches.
Have a look.
It was 3.30 when we finally sat down to a snack - oh, by the way, we couldn't find a single cafe, in the Kremlin and the museum shop was a joke: some ghastly souveniers and no books or leaflets about any of the museums in English - we had been on our feet over five hours. It was enough for Gail and I but Sue is made of sterner stuff and headed back to Red Square and St. Basil's Cathedral, leaving us to limp back to the Savoy feeling as though we had somehow failed our tourist test. Could that be worse than failing your visa entry test?
I'll have to sleep on this. More tomorrow.
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