The Red Square (Кра́сная пло́щадь) is a city square in Moscow that separates the Kremlin (the former royal citadel and now the official residence of the President of Russia) from a historic merchant quarter known as Kitai-gorod. The Red Square is often considered to be the central square of Moscow, as it is where most of the city's major streets originate.
I arrived in Moscow early in the morning after an overnight bus journey from St Petersburg, and with the help of my guidebook, took the metro to the city center. It was still very dark then and I was starving, so I stayed at the metro station for awhile to have a simple breakfast of biscuits and water before making my way to the Red Square. Besides, my sports camera didn't take very good pictures in the dark, so there was no point in going early.
Once I had filled my tummy and the sun had risen, I walked over to the square. For this trip, I had made it a point not to look at too many pictures of the places that I was going to visit. This was to prevent over-expectation and to increase the element of surprise. So I really didn't know what to expect. The first thing I saw was this:
I went to the right side of this building, and my oh my, what greeted me was a scene straight out of a fairy tale. I can only imagine how it looks like in winter, but even without the snow, the place was magical enough to me. The most captivating sight was of course the yummy-looking St Basil's Cathedral at the far side of the square. And there were those other buildings as well: the Spasskaya Tower, the Kazan Cathedral, the Lenin's Mausoleum and the GUM historic shopping mall. The clock on the Spasskaya Tower chimed every 15 minutes, churchgoers were chanting and singing on the church's loudspeaker, and the square looked so vast, with only a few people milling about. I felt like I was in a dream.
I stayed at the square till around 10 am to wait for the shops to open. In the meantime, I took about a hundred photos of St. Basil's Cathedral. Just couldn't get enough of it, because it reminded me of the cookies I loved when I was a child.
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| See the similarity? |
As I was still loitering in the Red Square, a girl approached me to ask for help taking a picture. I happily obliged and afterwards, she asked me if I wanted to have mine taken too. I handed her my camera and told her that was the best I had since I lost my phone. She felt sorry for me and ended up using her own phone to take my pictures and e-mailing them to me. How kind of her. And how very understanding. Only girls would understand the feeling of another girl in desperate need of a good photo! She was a great photographer too. These were the photos she sent:
