Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
52
(2 days from Berlin) and along poorly
maintained highways, and the waits at the
borders are significant. For any trip travel-
ing through or originating in Ukraine or
Belarus, you must get a transit visa from
those countries. Buses arrive at
Tsentralny
Avtovokzal (Central Bus Terminal)
at 2
Uralskaya Ulitsa (
&
495/468-0400
). The
Shcholkovskaya metro station is adjacent.
Taxis from the terminal take about 30
minutes to reach the center at a rate of
about 450 rubles.
roughly concentric circles: the Boulevard
Ring, the Garden Ring, and the Third
Ring. The last circle, the Moscow Ring
Road, is the bypass around the city limits.
The expansion continues apace and Mos-
cow is now an unwieldy megalopolis of 12
million people encompassing 1,000 sq.
km (386 sq. miles)—nearly 10 times big-
ger than Paris or Manhattan.
The Moscow and Yauza rivers curve
through the city, delineating neighbor-
hoods. Visitors are often struck by Mos-
cow's broad boulevards and vast squares, as
well as the city's large swaths of green space
(which turn to white space during the
winter). Yet housing remains largely con-
centrated in cramped apartment blocks.
All major airports are well out of town
(see above). Train stations are scattered
around a circle that generally corresponds
to the Garden Ring Road and the metro
system's Ring Line. Trains from the west
arrive at Kievsky Station or Belorussky
Station on the northwest side of town, and
trains from the north arrive at Leningrad-
sky Station or Rizhky Station on the
northeast side.
BY PUBLIC
TRANSPORTATION
The
Moscow Metro
is an attraction unto
itself (see the review on p. 146), and well
worth a visit just to view a few stations even
if you have other transport. It's generally
clean and efficient, with trains running
every 90 seconds or so during the day. Sta-
tion entrances are marked with a letter M.
The Circle Line runs around the center,
with nearly a dozen radial lines crossing it.
Color-coded maps are posted at every sta-
tion entrance and in every train car, and
GETTING AROUND
MOSCOW
Visitor Information
Moscow has lacked a network of official
tourist offices since the demise of the Soviet
era.
Intourist,
formerly the government
tourist agency, can be useful and has offices
in the Kosmos Hotel at 150 Prospekt Mira
(
&
495/730-1919;
www.intourist.ru) and
closer to downtown at 10 Leontevsky Peru-
lok (
&
495/234-9509
). Hotel concierges
and tour desks are likely to have as much
information as Intourist, or more. Most
hotels and many newspaper kiosks in the
center of town sell maps in English (ask for
a
karta na angliiskom,
pronounced “
kar
-ta
na ahn-
glees
-kom”). Pick up a copy of the
free English-language daily
The Moscow
Times
for weather, exchange rates, enter-
tainment listings, and more. The newspa-
per is not sold at newsstands, but most of
the hotels listed in chapter 5 (particularly
the high-end ones) carry copies.
3
City Layout
At Moscow's heart and nearly its geo-
graphical center lies the Kremlin, from
which the rest of the city has expanded in
Map Confusion
Beware of maps and guidebooks printed before the mid-1990s, which may include
the Soviet-era names of many streets and metro stations instead of the new ones.
