Day  4 Moscow

It was great to have a quieter day even tho it was still midnight when we hit the bed.Our bus braved the very busy roads again and headed to SW and then W firstly to a great lookout at Sparrow Hill which gave us quite a view over the city or part thereof as with a pop of some 12mill I don,t think we could cover it all.This had a very big ski jump and it looked terrifyingly steep.Here also was the main university of Moscow (there are a few).As you can imagine it was quite an imposing sight on huge expanse of land.Then it was on to Bow Hill and to Victory Park.Wow I had thought I'd seen some magnificent war memorials but I think this outdid them all. It was an extremely tall column decorated with some 250 scenes.of battle with a huge slain dragon at the base.Behind this was a very large museum. Then we were taken underground to see some of the Metro stations and, would you believe, we even travelled 3 stations without losing anyone. The stations we saw were decorated in different themes like one had larger than life bronze statues depicting the working life of the people like a woman stroking a hen or a man holding a sheaf of wheat.During the war people lived down here which is some 80mts underground.The escalators are on a very steep incline and move very fast so people stand on every second step and some even manage to continue reading at the same time!The Metro carries 7million people a day and has taken 10mill at timesIt is also very neat and clean with no graffiti.We came out in the city .We came out near the Bolshoi Theatre.This has been refurbished but everywhere else there seems to be buildings behind scaffolds and also lots of road reconstruction.Surprisingly we were back on the ship by midday and after a late lunch I was ready to try and catch up on some sleep before the Captains Welcome Cocktail Party.Dinner wasn't till 8.30 so it was a late night again after an enjoyable day with no rain today and a little sun.