Last week, my husband and I went to Moscow for a little getaway. We just wanted to get away for a couple of days and break free from the daily routine.

Initially, we thought about going to some other Russian city we've never been to before. First we considered Yekaterinburg, because there were direct and relatively cheap flights from our city—Nizhny Novgorod. However, the dates were not very convenient and the weather forecast was not overly exciting. We were also a bit worried that there wouldn't be much to see and visit.

So then, we thought about Sochi. It's usually absolutely beautiful in the spring, but it's as expensive as it is beautiful. Additionally, we'd have a pretty long layover in Moscow — about 6-7 hours — and so it's totally not worth it when you have only 2-3 days for the whole vacation.

You might wonder why we didn't consider St. Petersburg. Well, even though it's probably our favorite Russian city, we've been there a bit too often in recent years. And so we thought, "Moscow it is!" It's quite close (just four hours by train), so no waiting and no expensive plane tickets. There's always something to do and somewhere to go.

We didn't regret our choice. We had a chance to meet up with a friend of ours who has been living in Moscow for 4 years now. Aside from that, we visited several interesting tourist attractions:

- the famous Moscow-City business center,

- the Body Worlds exhibition,

- the Cold War museum (on of Stalin's former anti-nuclear bunkers, 65 meters underground),

- the museum of cosmonautics.

As always, I was impressed by the cleanliness of this city and the number of astonishingly expensive cars. Right away, you can see the difference between the capital and all the other Russian cities, even the major ones, let alone the rural areas. You see where all the money goes. It feels like a European city, which is great... for the Muscovites. Sadly, Moscow is so not Russia.