Tue28Jun16: ...goodbye Moscow goodbye...

Up at 8am and we only have a few hours to wrap up our visit to Moscow before heading to St Petersburg.  After our traditional bliny & coffee breakfast at Tepemok, we walk down to the pedestrian mall on Ulitsa Nikolskaya and explore the last section of old Moscow city wall, repainted orange and complete with a fortified tower and gate.

Surprisingly, after a week of closures, the gate leading to Alexander Park and the Tomb to the Unknown Soldier is open, so we pay our respects to the fallen military.

 Although it's not yet 10am there's already a long line-up at Lenin's Mausoleum,so we walk past and check out the honour guard at Saviour's Gate.


As seems to happen every day, a group of military enter and cross Red Square to the delight of all the tourist photographers.

It's time to leave, so we pointedly say "Goodbye" to each and every facet of Red Square and head back to the hotel to finish packing our suitcases.  After a goodbye to Luba, and return the key, we're on our way to the Metro.  For two experienced travellers we should know how to follow signs in Cyrillic, but after passing Kitay Gorod station three times, and wasting 20 minutes of time, we finally get on the correct subway and are heading towards the Leningradskiy Railroad Station.

The Sapsen train pulls out at exactly 13h40 and soon we're into the suburbs of Moscow and heading west at 200kph.

Along the railroad there's not an acre of arable land in sight, so all these little farm houses and villages must be (a) summer homes for city folk, or (b) people make their living cutting down and processing pine trees.










Sapsen pulls into St. Petersburg just before 6pm and by 6:30pm we're having supper at the KFC at our neighbourhood Petrogradskaya Metro station.  Yes, that's right.  KFC!  There's no English menu, but with a signboard showing plenty of food pictures, our pointing and gesturing gets us the salad and chicken that we crave.
Then follows the usual 1km trundle of suitcases down the street to the Andersen Hotel and we're soon reunited with the hotel's Reception staff who confirm (a) my bike and bag are at Pulkovo Airport, and (b) we have confirmed rooom reservations for Saturday and Sunday night (or Katerina promises to find a room in her home village).  Shortly afterwards, four of the TDA Cycling staff arrive in two of the tour vehicles, they dump their bags in the lobby, so we go through the round of introductions:  one Turk, one Hungarian, and two Slovaks.  This promises to be a mult-national crew.
No Euro2016 tonight, so we head out to pick up some water before settling in to watch a bit of Wimbledon tennis before heading off to bed.