Diamonds are a girl's best friend . . . ..

We spent Friday morning salivating over the unbelievable crown jewels exhibition in the Kremlin.  Nuggets of gold, platinum, emeralds, rubies, sapphires, diamonds, diamonds, diamonds.  Incredible pieces of jewelry in crowns, flower bouquets, and more than one showcase with just diamonds (although the room was dark, we needed our sunglasses for the sparkle).

There was a ruby so big that the Swedish king added emeralds to the top and gave it to Catherine the Great as a strawberry.  One of my other favorites was a map of russia made out of diamonds with a ruby to mark moscow and other precious gems denoting the Ural mountains.  We had to check our cameras, phones, along with our coats before we walked through a metal detector to enter the exhibit so no pictures unfortunately.

View of the Kremlin Wall from outside the Armoury

After the Diamond Fund we visited an apartment where Tchaikovsky lived for a year, along with Rubinstein.  Our guide was wonderful and worked very hard to ensure we understood everything in the museum.  It was interesting to see and walk through the rooms where Tchaikovsky lived and composed his 2nd symphony.  Probably more information than we wanted to know and could possibly remember, but still a neat experience.

Otherwise Friday was a pretty slow day - other than running into a park with tons of fountains (see pictures below).  We did most of our packing so that we'd be ready to leave for the airport bright and early on Saturday - as you all know we are planners after all :)