Quite possibly the best thing I did in Russia was go to Red Square by night.
So, the way the trip worked was that I started in Moscow, journeyed to four other cities and then flew home again from Moscow. I gave myself a couple of days there. If something messed up my plane from Perm, I needed to be able to try again the next day without risking missing my London flight and overstaying my visa – which was on my mind the entire nearly three weeks because as soon as I hit Russian soil, drone protestors announced they would be closing Heathrow the weekend I was flying home. For a while, I had my eye on an emergency last-minute flight to Rīga and figuring it out from the safety of a visa-free country. In the end it all came to nothing.
So I’d given myself two nights in Moscow at the end and rather than the cheap and familiar Ibis at Paveletskays, I had an unknown hotel up against the Kremlin wall. Well, not quite. But it backed into Alexander Gardens which is at the foot of the entire western wall and, at the right angle, I could see the Kremlin towers from my window.
I’d wanted to see Red Square by night during my first Moscow stay but I hadn’t done it. That’s partly because there was a market and an international military tattoo clogging up the square but partly because those days were long and exhausting and I didn’t want to go out on a two-train metro journey when I’d only got in at 7pm, after the electricity was switched back on.
But at this distance? It would have been 100% pure unadulterated laziness to not bother.
I’m so glad I didn’t go in my first few days. The sight that assaulted my retinas needed to be seen as a burst and not around the edges of the market.
Along the east side of Red Square is a long and magnificent shopping centre. Imperial-style, stone, ornate. Absolutely covered in strings of lights, as it turns out, plus floodlights on the roof. I stopped at the top of Red Square and said something I don’t say on this blog.
Of everything I did and saw that trip, this was the big one. The square was empty and lit up like… well, I was going to say Blackpool Illuminations but I imagine it puts that to shame. It was nothing I could ever have imagined. And because it has those huge floodlights, there’s no need for streetlights anywhere. It’s just light.
Actually, those squillion watt lights did bad things to my eyes. I found feel the little muscles in my eyeballs tightening, trying to block it out and I soon had a bad headache and insane sensitivity to the wobbly floor in the hotel. The second time I went, I made a conscious effort not to look even in the direction of the floodlights.
I’d already been delighted with the open views across Red Square that afternoon. St Basil’s dominates the bottom, the big red walls run along one side, the burgundy museum at the top and GUM along the other side. Now I saw that all over again, the colours ultra-saturated against the night sky instead of pastel against the grey-white afternoon sky. I took so many photos.
If you happen to get an empty Red Square, do make the effort to pop up there after dark. I think that hour was the highlight of the whole three weeks.