I was not born a Cossack...nor a Tatar of the Golden Horde...a horseman of the outback nor the Snowy River.
We lived in Castle Hill...in those days a rural outer suburb of Sydney...our father the local doctor.
Led to the stalls with my big sister for our first riding lesson...stable door swinging open...a massive muscled beast on its hind legs rearing out...neighing nay braying...its hooves right there in front of us...bigger than big.
Out the farm gate...down the dirt road to Old Northern Road...the main road the circus used to march with us kids streaming behind when they came to town...camping on the hill across the road from the public school I would be going to next year.
Woooh...Stop...Im not allowed to cross the road by myself...asking an older boy on a bicycle to let me cross with him...off again...as fast as my little legs would carry me.
Four black metal horses leaping into a fountain...frozen for multitudes to photograph...probably the biggest crowd Id seen in Moscow.
Alexander says, 10 million visited the Kremlin during the 2018 Football World Cup...not only a jewel of Russia...a jewel anywhere.
Security at the entrance gates so tight I doubt Putin will have time to meet and greet...I hear he lives here.
A feast of portraits...Vietnamese ladies in colourful traditional dress and bamboo nonla conical hats exuding joy as they pose...every nationality represented...Russians keeping an eye on all
of us...straight lines...checking IDs as if entering customs...some holding up progress...me a dancer so no delay in letting me in.
Through the Troitskie gate...Peter the Greats Arsenal lined with cannons from the Napoleonic Wars on our left...the Poteshny Palace then the State Kremlin Palace on our right.
Keep to the right...keep off the road barked through megaphones as errant folk approaching the cannons are chased away by guards disinclining to make their day.
I hear that is where Putin has digs...feel him smiling looking down...our repast will have to be another day.
Alexander leads past muraled faceted doorway arches...stop...into a heaving queue...gilded cupolas of the court churches and Czarinas Viewing Chamber peeping over white walls ahead...closed door on our right Denise & I would enter later...bunched crowds ahead...our queue turning left into the Dormition Cathedral for the start of a day of Wow Wow Wow...resplendent murals and carved ornamentation that could not but take the breath away.
First built in 1326 then fell down in 1474 and rebuilt...where Ivan the Terrible was crowned in 1547...ravaged by the Polish in 1612...freshly painted with frescoes in by Napoleon in
1812...where Russias last Tzar Nicholas II was crowned in 1896...the graves of 10 Metropolitans and 9 Patriarchs under the floor...round columns with saints with swords...special carved stalls of praying places for Patriarchs and Royalty...full to the brim with 62 icons and the most lavish paint job I have ever and are ever likely to see.
Built in dedication to the death of the Virgin Mary...its main icon a 1479 painting of the apostles moving on clouds to the deathbed of the Mother of God...the Dormition.
Uspesky Sobor...the Cathedral of the Assumption in the Guidebooks...Dormition Cathedral in the printed information I obtained inside...known as the Main Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin for 500 years.
Denise and I return later in the day and sit on the few pews available...bathing in majesty...sucking hallowed air deeply...determined to not let the memory of its ambience fade away...NO PHOTOS!!!
Alexander leads us into Cathedral Square...Dormition (Assumption) Cathedral behind...Cathedral of the Archangel Michael ahead on our left...a parade of horses in the shade of the Granovitaya Chamber and the Cathedral of the Annunciations golden towers ahead on our right...our group dispersing but me pressing as close to the front as I can...a
The lead white horse steps forward...its tall hatted rider in bright blue...head held high...
