Okay I've got a couple of tours to report on. On Thanksgiving day, Crystal had school, so Jolene and I took the opportunity to visit a chocolate factory. Here we got to see a bit about the history of chocolate, some chocolate works of art, and more importantly we got to visit the production area and sample warm chocolates right off the line.
Unfortunately we were not allowed to take pictures in the production area, but needless to say it was pretty cool and the samples were Oh So Good!
So you can see we had to wear lab coats and hair nets and the nice yellow slippers over our shoes. Speaking of those yellow slippers, you find those all over the place here. They like to keep their floors clean so the have slippers you slip on over your shoes as you enter the building.
A sample of the chocolate sculptures around. You can see the rest of our pics from the tour here: ChocolateFactory Pics
The most recent tour we took was of a bunker Joseph Stalin had made in WWII. Here is a view from Google Maps. The stadium was only built to cover the fact that a bunker was being built. The bunker is about 1,000,000 square feet so a construction project that big requires a big cover story. The entrance to the bunker that we used was added after the bunker, well part of it was turned into a museum. Before this area was connected to the Kremlin through a 17km tunnel.
The architecture inside the bunker was really cool, and all of it was built by prisoners. Stalin didn't want his secret bunker known so he had prisoners build it and once the construction was done, work on the stadium stopped and the prisoners were sent to another project in some other part of the country.
From the center of the tables, the ceiling is arched similar to that of a satellite dish. The effect of this made the speaker in the middle much louder without the use of microphones. It also focused sound from around the table to the middle. Joseph Stalin was a very soft spoken man and wanted the acoustics to make himself sound louder and avoid the use of electronics.
Stalin's desk was simple, but he had 3 phones, one to call the Kremlin, one to call the Generals in the field and one his Aids could call him on. In the top left corner is a replica of his pipe. Stalin also smoke very heavily. After our tour of the bunker, we headed to an outdoor bazaar in Izmaylovo. Then a short 30 minute metro ride home. Here are the rest of our pictures.
Unfortunately we were not allowed to take pictures in the production area, but needless to say it was pretty cool and the samples were Oh So Good!
So you can see we had to wear lab coats and hair nets and the nice yellow slippers over our shoes. Speaking of those yellow slippers, you find those all over the place here. They like to keep their floors clean so the have slippers you slip on over your shoes as you enter the building.
A sample of the chocolate sculptures around. You can see the rest of our pics from the tour here: ChocolateFactory Pics
The most recent tour we took was of a bunker Joseph Stalin had made in WWII. Here is a view from Google Maps. The stadium was only built to cover the fact that a bunker was being built. The bunker is about 1,000,000 square feet so a construction project that big requires a big cover story. The entrance to the bunker that we used was added after the bunker, well part of it was turned into a museum. Before this area was connected to the Kremlin through a 17km tunnel.
The architecture inside the bunker was really cool, and all of it was built by prisoners. Stalin didn't want his secret bunker known so he had prisoners build it and once the construction was done, work on the stadium stopped and the prisoners were sent to another project in some other part of the country.
From the center of the tables, the ceiling is arched similar to that of a satellite dish. The effect of this made the speaker in the middle much louder without the use of microphones. It also focused sound from around the table to the middle. Joseph Stalin was a very soft spoken man and wanted the acoustics to make himself sound louder and avoid the use of electronics.
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