I feel like we were doomed in Moscow from the get go. Our flight from Santorini to Athens was delayed and when we got to Athens we were so hungry and planned to get food after we had checked in our bags. We walked past a heap of restaurants and what not but wanted to deal with our on board luggage first. There were no places to eat after that. We were so shattered. Our plane was at 1:35 in the afternoon and we hadn't eaten yet. I wanted to punch someone in the head.
I'd be lying if I didn't say I was s*** scared sitting in the airport waiting to board a plane to Russia. I don't know why I was so scared, because as it turned out Russia is no where near as scary as everybody thinks.
While we were sitting on the plane I kept falling asleep basically I too of the Russian lady sitting next to me. I woke up 3 times with my head almost on her shoulder. Maybe it was because she just looked so comfy. Then the food came! The hostesses took forever to get to us. Brendan said I kept staring then down. I like think of it as eye encouragement. The food wasn't even that great but at the time it was amazing and I basically ate the containers everything came in.

4 hours later we landed in Moscow. We caught the express train from the airport into town and walked out into the freezing cold. Of course coming from the Greek island we weren't wearing anything particularly warm, either. Everyone was in snow jackets and we were rocking t-shirts. Because we're obviously badass. We weren't too cold to begin with walking down the street and were like its cold but everyone is so over doing it with these snow jackets. We soon understood the need.
When we walked out of the station into the street our plan was to find a street name on our map to try and locate our hostel. Then we found a street sign and it took us about 0.1 of a second to get lost. It was all just symbols. Then a lovely lady asked us if we needed help because she spoke English and could hear us complaining about how it is just a bunch of symbols. She pointed us in the right direction and we were on our way! Then we got lost again, but the same thing happened!! Another girl asked us if we needed help and we were on our way again. We ended up finding where we needed to be, but, in the place of what we expected to be a building, was a gate. The confusion started again and we walked up and down a small part of the street for ages trying to figure out if there was some sort of secret entrance or something into the gate. We had our third angel of the night in the form of two girls who stopped and decided to make it their mission to find this place. They tried calling which didn't work so it was go time. Turns out we had to go through the gates into a back alley way which we were too scared to do in Moscow at night and they just walked around opening any door possible trying to find this place. Eventually they found it for us! They were amazing and took us up to where we needed to be. Turns out the hostel was some random Russian guys spare room. That was nice. His English was pretty shocking too. But he gave us chocolate so I was sold. Everything my mum taught me about candy and strangers when I was younger went out the door when he put down that block of chocolate on the table. It was so awkward talking to this guy, and Brendan kept confusing him with his thick Aussie accent. He offered us bread, to which we said no and sat in the kitchen awkwardly before paying him. There were MasterCard and Visa signs everywhere but when we went to pay he said "cesh" in his Russian accent. Which we said a lot later on. He also gave us the tour of our room which consisted of him turning the heater on and the saying "maxymoom". We mimicked that a lot later on too. While he was showing us the heater, Brendan tripped over a mat and hip and shouldered the stand alone wardrobe in the room. He thought he was trying to open it because he didn't see him trip so he ripped out a key from no where and opened it for Brendan. That was weird. We snuck out while we could in search for some dinner. We had no idea where to go and the first sign we saw was Maccas. I had to point on a chart to order because no one spoke English and everyone was staring at us it was the scariest Maccas I've ever had. Afterwards we walked to a crepe place. Brendan broke rule #1 of crepe ordering and ordered a savory crepe. It had beans and s*** in it. wtf Brendan. He hated it so much it was a little funny. We went back to our spare room and liked it a little more when we looked out the window to some pretty cool views of Moscow.

In the morning we woke up and left the guys apartment, but not before Brendan confused him one more time. We headed to the station and thought we understood it all. Turns out we didn't and ended up walking up and down the entire station about 5 times before security stopped us to ask what we were doing. They helped us out and we were on our way. The station we arrived at was amazing!! It was decked out with chandeliers and s*** it was so cool!! Everything in Russia is so fancy! We had to find a locker for our bags and asked about 1000 people - give or take a couple - if they spoke English so they could help us and they all said no. Except one woman who said yes and then pretended she didn't. I wanted to punch her in the face so bad. Then when we finally found the locker storage, they didn't speak English either and decided to speak about us in Russian so obviously and were laughing because we couldn't speak Russian. I also wanted to punch them in the face. We eventually got our locker as by that stage, I was over it, angry and upset that I wasn't in the mood for anything. Luckily I had Brendy there to pick me up so we could keep going and we headed in the centre of Moscow. We stopped at a supermarket along the way and they had pre mixed nesquik. That cheered me up a lot and then I was back on Russia's side. We stopped on Starbucks for some wifi so we could google maps red square and we headed towards there. We stopped in a lot of stores and shopping centers along the way, only because we couldn't handle the weather. It was 1 degree in the middle of autumn!!! We understood the need for snow jackets then, and we didn't have proper winter clothes so we just had to make do with what we had. It was so so so cold!! I couldn't feel most of me. At one point I thought my feet had been chopped off because I couldn't feel them. I tried to combat the cold by wearing two pairs of socks. Didn't work. Probably needed to wear three that day, but I could barely put my shoes on wearing two, so it just didn't happen.
Anyway, red square is really cool. Unfortunately we happened to go at a time where they were setting up for a ceremony for the winter games that was happening a couple days after we left, so we got to see it with a big screen and a heap of chairs set up which killed the vibe a little bit. We checked out saint basils cathedral which is pretty funky and walked through the main square but it was so cold that we had to seek refuge into another shopping centre. I ate a potato in that shopping centre which was nice because Russians dig their potatoes. We left that shopping centre and explored Moscow a little more. We found a big garden area with statues and a fire which was guarded by two guys in odd uniforms. We decided after that, that perhaps the only way to keep warm would be vodka so we went back to the shopping centre again to buy some. It was good, but it didn't work. We decided on trying to find an English speaking cinema to kill some time before having to catch our over night train. We googled it and we were on our way accompanied by our vodka. We walked and walked and walked, following google maps, but it just lea us along some freeway and after a while we decided to give up on the idea because we were cold, hungry and didn't want to get hit by a car, so we walked back onto the main street in search of somewhere to eat. Just as we were about to give up and turn back to catch a train somewhere, a restaurant appeared behind a tree which was the first thing to go our way the entire day, other than the vodka of course. We could tell from outside that it was way too expensive for us, but we were so tired, cold and sore to care so we just made it rain and became high rollers for an hour and a half. It was such a nice place too it felt like a crime to leave and go back into the cold. It was so sad. We made our way back to the station to pick up our bags from the mean men working there and tried to find the terminal that our train was leaving from. No signs had the English translation underneath and no one spoke English. It was the train station from hell. We found another angel that day who overheard us asking someone if they spoke English and he came to our rescue to help us out with direction. Turns out there are three stations considered as the one terminal or some crap and we had to go outside and through an underpass to get to where we needed to be. I didn't hesitate to tell the angel that, that's what he was and he got awkward, it was funny. The station where we were catching our train from was so much better. There were English translations everywhere! We printed our boarding passes and headed to the seating area. There was no where to sit, so we threw our bags down on the ground and sat along with them. Everyone was staring at us like we were strange and then we realized that no one sits on the ground. Even if they didn't have a seat, they would put their bag on the ground, but no one would sit on the ground. We were like yolo and everyone was like no don't do that, but we did it anyway. I decided to change my shoes because my boots were squishing my toes inside of themselves and as I was doing that, some Russian woman came up to me and was saying something. I was like yep good on ya and we decided she was calling me a w**** for sitting in the ground without a shoe on my foot for about 5 seconds. We moved after that, and went to the upstairs seating area. There were no seats there either, but there was a big window sill behind a vending machine, so we set up shop and got settled in for a couple of hours before hopping on our train to Saint Petersburg.