Moscow through the Eyes of an American (part 2)
The major attraction in Moscow is the Kremlin, alone more than reason enough for a Moscow visit, and you're sure to admire it. Near the Kremlin is enormous, all history-filled, splendid Red Square. The chief attraction there is the massive Lenin Mausoleum, first destination of every visitor to Moscow.
Tverskaya Street, Moscow's main thoroughfare, is nearby, and one will want to walk along it - noting the lovely old National Hotel, shops, cafes, and other enterprises on the way.
There are, of course, innumerable other sightseeing attractions. I should certainly suggest taking in Teatralnaya square, with the classic colonnaded facade of the early nineteenth-century Bolshoi Theater; the theatrical district with its narrow, elderly streets; Gorky Park, with grass that may need clipping, but without all those crazies and unfortunate unemployed people who hang out in Central Park of New York; remaining seventeenth-and-eighteenth-century town houses and public buildings. At Vorobyovi Hills is Moscow State University one of the world's largest and modern buildings. And its style is imitated in a number of smaller structures, called sometimes Moscow skyscrapers.
The Moscow Metro, or subway, is a twentieth-century wonder that must be seen to be believed, rivaled only by that of St. Petersburg. Each station is the work of a different team of architects, artists, and designers, and the more elaborate are nothing less than palaces. Additionally, the Metro, as a transit system, is excellent and spotlessly clean. It'll take you from the center to the suburbs in no time. It doesn't depend on any traffic and is reliable even in the rush hour. Accidents are very rare in it, to say nothing of criminals' actions.
For your first trip to the Russian Federation, don't exhaust yourself running from one end to the other of the largest country in the world. Leave for another time the pleasures of Siberia, the Caucasus and its mountains, the Volga and the
Black Sea. See Moscow to begin with. No one returns unimpressed from it.
Jane Bradey