Moscow - Day II (II)

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After lunch we walked to the Novodevichy Monastery, which dates back to the 16th century. The monastery included a number of cathedrals and other buildings that we were able to visit.

 

We also visited the adjacent cemetery that bears the same name. It is the resting place of many of Russia’s important historical figures, including Boris Yeltsin and Nikita Krushchev. I liked the following grave site, which showed a man and his dog.

We then made the long walk back to the hotel so Emilie could catch a cab for the airport. Along the way we passed a massive communist-era building, which seemed very imposing to me.

We also walked along a popular pedestrian street (Stary Arbat) and quickly found ourselves in the midst of a massive celebratory crowd that was walking the in opposite direction of us en masse. We basically felt like salmon swimming upstream for about a mile and it turned out that they were celebrating the 50^th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin becoming the first man in space.