Torontonians
What are people busy doing?
Celebrating… at Dundas Square
Working… in the China town
Walking… on a busy road
Rowing… in the peaceful lake
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Things to do in Moscow’s artist’s block
Arbat Street is a 1.25km pedestrian mall and is one of Moscow’s most famous streets. It’s an art market, with instant portrait painters, craftsmen, jugglers, buskers and little cafés offering nice treats.
Arbat Street, with poet Pushkin’s house
Arbat St and little picture exhibits
There were a number of performers who were handing out discount coupons for circuses and music shows and other gigs.
Wall of peace
This wall at the east end of the street consists of individually painted tiles on the theme of international friendship. A section of it is covered in spent chewing gum, forming an interesting but sticky mosaic.
Café. I can’t quite read cursive Cyrillic alphabet
шоколадный торт и кофе с молоком
Sports Bar (near Arbatskaya)
At night, I went to a sports bar to have some local beer and watch a football (called soccer in USA) game between Moscow and St. Petersburg (I think). I was meeting someone I found on couchsurfing, and she told me it was important to get out of the place before the match ended. The place was getting louder as the match was drawing to an end. I did encounter drunk football fans in the subway later on. 
So as you can see, I had fun on Arbat street and it definitely deserves more attention that I gave it!
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Lets go Raptors
Toronto Raptors is a professional basketball team based in the city and part of the NBA (National Basketball Association) based in USA. The team was established quite recently, in 1995.
I am not someone who follows basketball so I don’t know their current standings and status. However, a friend had extra tickets for this game and I gladly joined him.
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Air Canada Centre is a huge stadium and was quite full. I loved watching the entertainment segments during breaks – so much better than watching commercials on TV!
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Seven most prominent buildings of Moscow
The “Seven Sisters” is the English name given to a group of Moscow skyscrapers designed in the Stalinist style. Moskvich (Muscovites) call them Stalinskie Vysotki (Сталинские высотки / स्तालीन्स्कीए वीसोक्ती), meaning “Stalin’s tall buildings”. They were built from 1947 to 1953, in an elaborate combination of Russian Baroque and Gothic styles, and the technology used in building American skyscrapers.
The buildings had more symbolic than utilitarian value and gave a taste of Soviet architectural and technological progress.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia
The building is on the first ring highway of Moscow and close to the Old Arbat artist street.
The building was obviously bigger than what my camera could take!
The seven sisters are as follows:
Moscow State University (MGU), Sparrow Hills
Hotel Ukraina
Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Hilton Moscow Leningradskaya Hotel
Kotelnicheskaya Embankment Building
Kudrinskaya Square Building
Red Gates Administrative Building
Lomonosov Moscow State University seen from my flight. (Also seen is the circular Olympic stadium)
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The communist ideal of the past has radically changed to a symbol of flourishing capitalism
Red Square: Kremlin to your left, GUM to your right
Государственный Универсальный Магазин, (गोसुदार्वेन्नीई उनीवेअरसाल्नीई मगाझीन / Gosudarstvennyi Universalnyi Magazin – गुम/GUM) or simply known as the State Department Store during Soviet times, is a beautiful building on the north side of the Red Square.
GUM
Soviet era: By the time of the Russian Revolution of 1917, the building contained some 1,200 stores. After the Revolution, the GUM was nationalised and continued to work as a department store until Joseph Stalin turned it into office space in 1928 for the committee in charge of his first Five Year Plan. After reopening as a department store in 1953, the GUM became one of the few stores in the Soviet Union that was not plagued by shortages of consumer goods, and the queues to purchase anything were long, often extending all across Red Square.
GUM at night, with the iconic St. Basil’s cathedral
Post communism: At the end of the Soviet era, GUM was partially and then fully privatized. It is open today as a popular tourist destination for those visiting Moscow. Many of the stores feature high-fashion brand names familiar in the west; locals refer to these as the “exhibitions of prices”, the joke being that no one could afford to actually buy any of the items on display. I agree, the prices were ridiculous.
The swanky shopping mall
Indeed, one of my fashion-conscious friends joked, “We go to London or Paris for shopping.” 
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Fallen leaves
End of fall is near and you can see in the pictures that most leaves have now fallen, forming a carpet of dry leaves all over the city. I cut through this park (Northwest corner of Trinity Bellwoods Park) often and I enjoy biking through it. I love the crunchy sound of walking on the foliage on the ground.
A bust of Simón Bolívar, the leader of the Latin American freedom struggle from Spain, decorates this area.
During summer (picture on google map above), there is a farmers market in this area. Other events are held in the main area of this park, for example the Queen West Art Crawl blogged about previously.
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