I See Dead People (aka Our Visit to Lenin's Tomb)

Yesterday marked the beginning of our last weekend here in Moscow. Since we hadn't hit the major sights, we set out at 9:30 in the morning with two of Rob's colleagues. The weather was glorious: 37 whole degrees. Farenheit. It's amazing how quickly our perspective on warm has changed. What, no snow? It's toasty out!

Back to our outing. First stop: Lenin's tomb.

Karl and Petra watched Henry while Rob and I saw one of Moscow's most unique attractions. Kindly enough, there is no admission charged for this creepy activity. Instead, you progress single file down stairs into the marble mausoleum. The entire structure is red and black marble, and as you enter the chamber where he lies in-state, you find yourself in a room illuminated only by the red highlighting and the lights on his body. It's like something out of a movie. Very surreal.

There are questions about whether or not Lenin will be buried at some point. At the moment, they have to touch up his make-up every few days. But then, when a man's been dead for eighty years, a little touch-up now and then is never a bad thing.

From there we went to the Arbat, an historical part of Moscow with many small shops and booths. The weather turned then while we were having lunch, and we decided to head to a museum and then home again. The museum is actually quite close to our apartment, and I have passed it on numerous occasions without knowing what it was. It was a nice detour, and I found a new artist to love: Vereshchagin. His paintings are so exact many truly look like photographs.

After the museum, it was time to head back to our apartment and talk to the folks at home. We had had a full day of walking this enormous city centre, and our families? They were just waking up....