My first encounter with Moscow was my very first time abroad in 1986, during the jolly Soviet days. I remember it as very serious, gloomy and grey. My strongest memory is, however, feeling very ashamed of wearing jeans since all the Moscovian girls wore such nice identical skirts and gigantic bows in their hair, I felt like such a trashy little outsider.
This is my third time in Moscow (fourth in Russia) and I absolutely love it, there is nothing gloomy about it but rather colourful. This Filipp Malyavin painting in the Tretyakov gallery illustrates it very well, the photo is terrible and obviously does not do the painting justice, but have a look at my pinterest board “Rossiya Matushka” for a Russian colour explosion. Ok, there is some gloominess, but of the artsy kind.
Opposite the Tretyakov gallery there is one of the few vegetarian restaurants in Moscow, so here you can enjoy a guilt free (and colourful!) borscht. As you can see in the picture, and which you already know, food is serious matter to me.
Speaking of food, I love the Eliseevskiy food store, very pompous with chandeliers and lots of gold.
One of our favourite places in Moscow is Tolstoy’s house, it is such an oasis with an adjoining smaller park. The last time we were here they even played classical music in the park (unfortunately not this time) which was full of scilla, this time it had that wonderfully crispy but at the same time musty smell of autumn. We also went to the Bulgakov museum but that was boring as hell.