Russian space program museum

My wife, Dee, and I began our trip to Russia on May 8, 2013, when we flew Delta Air Lines from Fort Myers, Florida, to New York, then took Aeroflot to Moscow.

Our first few nights in Russia were spent in the 25-story Cosmos Hotel (150, Prospekt Mira, Moscow, 129366, Russia; phone +7 [495] 234 10 00, www.hotel
cosmos-moscow.com), located near the city’s All-Russia Exhibition Centre.

From the hotel, we walked across a multilane road to the exhibition center, a very large park with many permanent buildings, statues and fountains, for a visit of three-plus hours. Temporary booths had food and games of chance. There was a big Ferris wheel with 4-person cabs, which we rode. 

It was Saturday, so there were crowds of people, with kids everywhere. It was hot that day, in the 70s, but most people were wearing pants, not shorts.

One building (near VDNKh Metro station) was like the museum at Cape Canaveral’s Kennedy Space Center in that it was full of displays and equipment from the Russian space effort. It was quite interesting. 

The building was called the Memorialnyy Muzey Kosmonavtiki, or Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics (111, Prospekt Mira, Moscow, 129515, Russia; phone +7 [495] 683 79 14, www.kosmo-museum.ru/?locale=en).

Outside of the museum was a stunning, 100-meter-tall, titanium monument shaped like a rocket trailing smoke. Commemorated in 1964 on the seventh anniversary of the launch of Sputnik 1, it celebrates Soviet achievements in space exploration.

STAN INK

North Fort Myers, FL