Majestic Moscow: 3 Day Winter Adventure

Getting familiar with the Red Square

Consider starting with a walking tour of the city to get your bearings and some fascinating information about the city’s history from a local! We tried the Moscow Free Tour, where you pay your guide at the end based on what you thought the tour was worth and how much you can afford to give. 

Or you can explore the city’s main central attractions in the vicinity of the red square by yourself, including St. Basil’s Cathedral, the Kremlin, Kazan cathedral, and the State History Museum. Enjoy the atmosphere on St Nikolas street before heading into GUM, a beautiful department store still selling Soviet-era ice cream! 

If you’re interested, queue up between 10am and 1pm to enter Lenin’s mausoleum, and then head to Alexander park to watch the changing of the guards on the hour. 

Hop the metro to St Savior’s Cathedral, which is free to enter and more spacious than St Basil’s. 

We recommend trying out a Russian canteen for dinner on a budget – it’s quick, tasty and cheap and you can see exactly what you’re ordering! After dinner, we walked for a while in one of the parks near our hotel, all lit up in fairy lights, as many are in the dark winter months.

See more of Moscow

Take the metro to Novodevichy Convent (300 rubles entry). Admire the beautiful buildings and take a look inside the cathedral (under renovation Feb 2019). We were lucky enough to visit when it had just been snowing, and it made for such an enchanting setting.  Walk by the lake just next to the convent, it may be frozen if you’re there in winter! 

Have lunch in this area, perhaps at another canteen, before taking the metro to Gorky Park. Warm up by visiting a museum in the afternoon – why not see something different at the Lumière photography museum? Being interested in photography ourselves, we really enjoyed the displays here.  Alternatively, you could visit the GULAG history museum. 

In total contrast to the canteens you’ve been dining at so far, have dinner at  the sophisticated Cafe Pushkin, which serves delicious French and Russian cuisine. We were lucky enough to spend Valentine’s day here – simply magical. 

Moscow metros ... and travelling further afield

Perhaps you might want to use this day to visit some of the sights in more depth, visiting museums or doing the tour of the Kremlin. If, like us, you’re happy just to see the outside for now, then why not use your third day to go on a day trip? The small town of Kolomna is 2 hours away by train and has plenty of interesting churches and mansions to discover. In any case, you should absolutely use your metro pass to visit the most beautiful metro stations, many of which are decorated with frescoes, marble columns, statues, stained glass and chandeliers. Our favourites were Mayakovskaya, Novoslobodskaya, Belorussky, and Trubnaya. Check out these amazing photos by David Burdeny, and add some to your list to visit!

Has Russia left you wanting more? No worries, hop on the train to St. Petersburg, and follow our guide to continue the adventure!

Don’t forget to check out all the key information you need to plan this trip and our photo gallery for Moscow!