Day 24 - Tour Day 13 – Fri 26 July 2019 – Moscow

Sunrise:         4:23am                                              Sunset:          8:47pm

Forecast:       17 to 27 partly cloudy

I was down to breakfast shortly after 6:30 this morning. 

Shortly after sunrise this morning

Beautiful spread and apart from hard boiled eggs, all the egg dishes, fried, scrambled and omelette, are prepared fresh. 

We departed at 8:30 for Sergiev Posad. Some major road works made the going very slow for about 20 minutes. We arrived at the Monastery around 10ish. 

The Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius is the most important Russian monastery and the spiritual centre of the Russian Orthodox Church. The monastery is situated in the town of Sergiyev Posad, about 70 km to the north-east from Moscow by the road leading to Yaroslavl, and currently is home to over 300 monks

Built in 1423, the squat, gold-domed Trinity Cathedralis the heart of the monastery, as well as its oldest surviving building.

We met the local guide Katerina, and we went into 4 or 5 of the churches there. Once the tour was over, we had free time until 12:15, then we were on our way back to the hotel again. We arrived back there shortly before 2pm.

We all headed out again at 4pm, to do the included City Tour, which had us riding the metro to a couple of different stations,

so we could see the different art works in them and Red Square, plus free time in Red Square or the Gum department store, until 7:15pm.

Most of us had something to eat before returning back to the hotel for an hour and then we met up again at 8:40 for our “Moscow By Night” tour.

We drove out to a view point, that overlooked the Olympic Stadium and was directly in front of the University of Moscow,

another of the ‘Seven Sisters’.

From there we drove to the river, just down from the Kremlin, where we had an Insight flourish of a couple of shots of vodka and some orange juice and the opportunity to take some photos.

After that, we then re-visited Red Square and half an hour to take some night time photographs.

By then it was  9:30, so once again we returned to the hotel but this time for the night.

Another full and final day tomorrow but that doesn’t start until 10am.

Apart from a rain shower while we were in Red Square earlier in the evening, the weather was once again nice and warm.

Steps Walked                     7,155

Hotel: Radisson Collection Hotel Moscow.