Day off: Red Square Moscow

Yesterday on Saturday evening we arrived in Moscow. Today on Sunday we have a day off to explore Moscow a bit, before I have to show up to the hospital tomorrow.

First of all, we met with Rob today. He is the Lilian’s husband, she is 2 weeks ahead of my treatment schedule. Rob introduced us to the Izmailovo hotel group in the morning. Tips where the nice restaurants are, where the supermarket can be found, the metro and tram stations are, where you can buy tickets for public transport (this is 1 ticket for both the metro and the tram), but which was also very important: he went to the phone store with us. We bought a Russian SIM card at the phone shop (data bundle for one month). We also brought an extra telephone (a previous cell phone that was still in our cupboard). We put this Russian SIM in this extra phone so that we can keep our own Dutch SIM cards in our own devices so that our own Whatsapps and other functionalities remain to function. The extra telephone thus becomes a kind of ‘hub’ to which we connect our devices to, so that this hub supplies our devices with internet. So we have internet on our own phones, while the extra phone is somewhere in the backpack. IDEAL!! Most of all, English is not really a spoken language here in Moscow. Rob has also indicated which apps we needed install on our phone to simplify things in the city. The result? We easily went on the subway to the city centre in a strange city where we don’t speak the language. Google Maps was very convenient, but also a Russian translation app where we can take a picture of Russian text and then the translations is shown onscreen (also ideal for a menu in resutarants). The metro app was great so that we can see exactly where we need to get on and off. Top!

First day in Moscow… this metropolis is really beautiful! You are constantly surprised. We enjoyed ourselves so much today on this day off! We went to the Red Square by metro and stayed there almost all day. Google Maps works wonders on finding something right away! 😉 You can endlessly take photos, what an experience! Obviously this has cost a lot of energy and I am now going to find my bed. On and around the Red Square you will find the famous Basil’s Cathedral, the Historical Museum, Kremlin, the GUM Shopping Mall, pleasant shopping streets, but also a real Central Kids Store nearby. Check out the photo gallery!

Tomorrow around noon the taxi will pick me up at the Vega hotel and I will go to the hospital for the first time. Sweet dreams!

Click on the images to open the gallery including explanations: