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To Do List: Did this today

Since I started my time in Moscow by breaking the cardinal rule (Nobody cares!) and blogging about what I did during the day, I figured that that would be a good way to end my blogging time here, too. Because the Institute was closed, and thus I had the whole day to tour the city. And tour I did! AHEM:

• I walked down Tverskaya in pursuit of the Matryoshka Museum, which my guidebook said was closed yesterday but open today. That is the exact opposite of what is true. All was not lost, however: I now know where the Ukrainian consulate in Moscow is located.
• I walked the rest of Tverskaya until I got to Red Square (Красная Площадь, as the kids call it). I took pictures and decided to check out the Lenin Mausoleum, since we didn’t have enough time in Moscow when I was there last to actually do that. Unfortunately, there are no signs anywhere for where to check bags/enter/anything at all, so I think I annoyed a few guards. Fortunately, I saw a historically significant corpse.
• I accidentally went into a metro station thinking that it doubled as an underpass and had to buy tickets to get out. Fortunately, I needed to buy tickets anyway. Can’t hold a good tourist down.
• I saw the new (outside of the) Bol’shoi! It was under construction in the spring, so I’d never seen the full thing in person before (and SPOILER it’s lovely).
• I had vareniki for lunch!
• I took the (beautiful, vast) metro to what the guidebook calls the “greater Moscow area” to see Tolstoy’s House Museum, Moscow edition. I have so many thoughts on this that I’m going to write a separate blog post (so scroll up), but I’d just like to give a bol’shoi spasibo shout out to the babushki on the street who so kindly pointed me in the right direction when asked.
• I took the metro to the Kitai Gorod neighborhood. I actually went to see the Moscow Museum (a guard informed me it had moved, a sign informed me it’s actually in the area I’d just come from), but that was all for the best because I ended up going to the Mayakovsky House Museum. REBYATA. Mayakovsky was the bad boy of Russian literature, and this is the bad boy of house museums. It is like no other. It’s arranged so that you walk down from the top floor, and they’ve arranged all of these writings/pieces of artwork/press clippings/books/posters/sculptures/ETC. thematically and colorfully and Mayakovskilly.
• I walked around Kitai Gorod and got khachapuri with cheese AND AN EGG ON TOP(!?) for dinner. It was sinfully good.
• Earlier in the day, I’d gotten an email from Laura, the other girl from my school who’s in Russia right now on the same fellowship (and speaks Russian like no другая). She was headed to see a play with some of her friends from when she’d studied abroad here, and asked if I would like to come along. Which, obviously, I did. The play was a bit odd, but what I understood of it was also thoroughly enjoyable.
• I came back to my hotel, blogged it out, and thought about what the last few days have meant to me.

A whole lot, as it turns out.