This one is for you, Tash Reid!

When we were in Moscow we visited Red Square several times. The thing that drew us back to Red Square again and again was St Basil's Cathedral. We didn't even go inside it. It was enough just to look at it from the outside.

I think St Basil's Cathedral is probably my favourite church in the world. To me, it looks like something out of a fairy tale. Like the type of castle a wizard might live in. I think if all churches looked like St Basil's then more people would go to church. Don't you think that St Basil's looks like a fun place to go?

On our first night in Moscow, we wandered down to Red Square late at night. Standing in Red Square, looking up at St Basil's was one of those pinch myself moments. It happened on a lot of our travels. I couldn't believe that I was actually getting to visit places that I've dreamed about visiting since I was little.

On our third day in Moscow, we walked through Red Square in the afternoon. It was the golden hour and the light was this beautiful honey colour. It's impossible to take a bad photo in such light.

It was here that I took my favourite photo of the whole trip. St Basil's and a heart shaped balloon. I heart St Basil's too!

More photos (slideshow) of Moscow on Flickr.

Our visit to Red Square was part of our Taste of Russia tour. We did a 9-day tour, travelling from Moscow to St Petersburg, with Intrepid Travel. Other entries from this trip include: Travel Pensieve: Novodevichy Cemetery.

Novodevichy Cemetery is one of Moscow's most popular tourist attractions. The cemetery is next door to Novodevichy Convent, a UNESCO World Heritage site so that might explain why so many people visit. There are also some famous people buried there.

I found the grave stones in the cemetery fascinating. In the graveyards that I've visited in the past, grave stones are usually just headstones with names and dates carved on them. The gravestones in Novodevichy were very elaborate. Some markers had pictures etched onto the stones. There were lots of sculptures as well.

These pictures and sculptures show what people valued in their lives. You kind of get a feeling for what the people might have been like when they were alive. There are some obvious ones, like men dressed in military uniforms or a sculpture of a ballerina. But then there are some random ones too. Like the woman pictured with her cat or the sculpture of a man and his dog. I'd love to know the reasons behind the choice of such monuments.

If you had to choose one thing to represent you for all eternity, what would it be?

More photos (slideshow) of Moscow on Flickr.

Our visit to Novodevichy Cemetery was part of our Taste of Russia tour. We did a 9-day tour, travelling from Moscow to St Petersburg, with Intrepid Travel. This is the first entry from that trip.

Not quite a highlight a day. Lucky I didn't make any promises :D

Tiananmen Square: the centre of Beijing and the heart of China. The square is named after Tiananmen, the Gate of Heavenly Peace and the north entrance to the Forbidden City. It is 440,000 square metres in size and it is the largest open-urban square in the world. We visited the square early on a Saturday morning and the place was already bustling with Chinese and Western tourists alike. Such a busy tourist attraction is obviously an irresistible magnet for the hawkers. The usual postcards were on sale, but here we could also buy Chairman Mao watches, books on the teachings of Mao and famous phrases of Mao. It was here that we first used our most valuable Chinese phrase, "Bu yao" (boo ya). It means, "I do not want" and it was well-worn by the end of our journey. Many Chinese people make the pilgrimage to the square to pay their respects to Mao. After his death he was embalmed and his corpse is now on display in the Chairman Mao Memorial Hall for all to see (from 9.30am to 11.30am - 7 days a week). The line often snakes for hundreds of metres and is filled with the believers and the curious. Poor Mao, he wanted to be cremated and now he suffers the indignity of being gawked at by thousands of people every day. Although, I too wanted to be one of the gawkers, but unfortunately time did not permit. In 1989, I avidly followed the Tiananmen Square protests in the media. The world watched in horror as the movement was quashed and we were shocked as information regarding the event was suppressed. I too was fixated and even did a school project on the protests. I expected to be moved by my visit to Tiananmen. However, it hardly registered on my emotional radar. It was hard to imagine it filled with a million protesting students. It was hard to envisage that lone protester standing in the path of a huge tank. Actually, it's hard to get an idea of just how big the square really is and it all feels a bit cold and clinical. For the heart of a country, it felt, well, heartless.
Did you know?... In January 2006, Google agreed to censor their mainland China site, Google.cn, to remove information about the 1989 Tiananmen Square Protest, as well as other topics such as Tibetan independence, the banned spiritual movement Falun Gong and the political status of Taiwan, confirming that Tiananmen is still an issue the government wants to avoid. In September 2006, Wikipedia refused to censor it's Chinese content site, resulting in it being blocked by the Chinese government. The Chinese Wikipedia's article on the Tianamen Square protests and massacre continues to exist. I wonder if FuShMuSh will be blacklisted?

Please don't carve arbitrarily on the Great Wall. Protect one brick and one stone consciously.

Please walk carefully on abrupt slope and dangerous way; Don't run and pushes to pash violently and the laugh and frolic.

China is not only half a world away from Australia, but it's also a completely different world of sights, sounds and smells. Our week and a half in China was certainly an experience we will never forget.

We spent 9 days in China on Intrepid's Taste of China tour. Our tour group of 10 people was lead by our wonderful guide Marcia. Without Marcia we would have struggled to order food in restaurants, catch trains or taxis, and just generally floundered in the chaos that is China. Thank you Marcia for all your help!

I know you're all waiting impatiently for an update, so I thought I'd try and post a highlight a day from our Chinese adventure. (But, I'm not making any promises!)

It has always been one of my life's ambitions to see the Great Wall, so when planning our China trip it was number one priority. I can say right now; it was totally worth doing! Put it on your to-do list today. We visited the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall. It is one of the best preserved sections of the wall and apparently is less touristy than the section at Badaling. Although, we did have to evade a street lined with hawkers at the bottom of the mountain. "Hallo Hallo Hallo, I recognize you! Tshirts! Only one dollar!". We elected not to take the cable car to the top and after a steep climb of 1000 steps we arrived at the top of the mountain to a breath-taking view, the Great Wall of China. It was awe-inspiring! Obviously, no bull dozers or earth-moving equipment were available in the 6th century, so the wall was built entirely by the blood, sweat and tears of Chinese workers. To think that the wall runs for 6000 km along the north of China. That's from Sydney to Perth and half way back again. I certainly wouldn't have wanted to lug all that rock to the top of the mountain. We traversed only a fraction of the wall, around 2km. Every now and again, I would stop for a moment and exclaim "Wow!". It was so impressive that words had escaped me.
Did you know?... It is often said that the Great Wall of China is the only man made object visible from space. However, this is an urban myth! The Great Wall is only a few metres wide, smaller than many freeways and motorways. It is also the same earthy colour as the country surrounding it. From a near-Earth orbit it is visible only under perfect conditions and it is no more obvious than many other man-made objects. Ed Lu, Expedition 7 Science Officer aboard the International Space Station, said "it's less visible than a lot of other objects. And you have to know where to look."