This morning, take some time to explore the neighborhood and its many lovely cafes. After breakfast on your own, we’ll reconvene and descend into Moscow’s “Underground Palace,” the city’s spectacular tunnel system, casting an ear to the local lore that still haunts these subterranean streets. We’ll wind our way through the tunnels until we arrive at the Cold War Museum tucked away inside Bunker 42, a secret fortress carved out for Stalin himself when it was believed that Russia was on the precipice of nuclear war. After a tour and lunch in the bunker, we’ll continue our underground journey to Bunker 703, declassified in 2018 and, aside from the occasional exhibition and electronic party hosted here, still relatively unknown to the public. We’ll reemerge and end the day in Zamoskvorechye, one of the oldest districts in the city, where we’ll glimpse Russian Orthodox churches, well-known theaters, and buildings dating back to the 14th century. Tonight, we’ll head to a restaurant serving Georgian food, a widely popular cuisine thanks to the large Georgian diaspora living in Russia.

Today we’ll delve into the origins of the Soviet Union, tracing the stories of the people, places, and events that catapulted the union into existence. After breakfast, we’ll visit Lenin’s Mausoleum, which houses the embalmed body of the prominent Soviet Union leader whose political and revolutionary influence rippled far beyond Russian borders, with various parties and movements across the globe adopting his ideologies. Just behind the mausoleum, we’ll find the Kremlin Wall Necropolis that serves as the final resting ground for several other prominent Soviet Union figures, including Leonid Brezhnev, Iosef Stalin, Sergey Korolev, and Yuri Gagarin. After lunch at a quintessential Soviet restaurant in Red Square, we’ll head to Victory Park for stunning views of the cityscape below. Honoring the Great Patriotic War, fought between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany during WWII, the park is replete with commemorative fountains, statues, and memorials. To contextualize what we’ve seen, we’ll tour the War Memorial Museum, which houses Soviet-era tanks and military aircrafts, among other heavy weapons. Upon returning to the hotel, the rest of the evening will be yours to explore the city on your own. For those interested, our hosts will lead an optional excursion to a traditional Russian banya for dinner, drinks, relaxation, and good conversation.

After a relaxing breakfast overlooking the Red Square, we’ll set out to explore Moscow through an astronomical lens. We’ll jet off to the Monument to the Conquerors of Space, a massive, rocket-shaped obelisk tattooed with engravings of scientists, workers, and cosmonauts. We’ll tour a street lined with busts of some of the most important Soviet cosmonauts in history known as Cosmonauts' Alley, then descend to the base of the obelisk. Here, we’ll enjoy a guided tour of the Cosmonautics Museum, which offers a retrospective glimpse into the evolution of space exploration and the chance to meet with a Cosmonaut. Among the museum’s many treasures, artifacts, and relics, we’ll spot Gagarin's space suit and a life-size model of the Soviet orbital station MIR. Lunch today will be at VDNKh, an exposition, museum, and sprawling recreational complex. We’ll gather around the People’s Friendship Fountain, which features sculptures of 16 young women dressed in the national costumes of each former Soviet republic. Later, we’ll set out to explore the Space Pavilion—packed with rockets, landing capsules, and explorable space stations—and Pavilion 52, home to the Museum of Soviet Arcade Machines. Try your hand at commanding a submarine in Morskoi Boi, or try your luck at a Soviet pinball machine. We’ll wrap up the evening with a delicious visit to a popular Soviet-era canteen, or cheburechnaya. Sample steaming bowls of borscht, the famous Ukrainian soup made of beetroot; hearty pelmenis, Russian-style ravioli; deep-fried chebureki, meat-filled turnovers; or plov, a beloved Central Asian dish of rice and meat. After dinner, we’ll stop by the legendary Tchaikovsky Classical Concert Hall for a spellbinding concert in homage to the famed Soviet composer.

On this day we'll get to see another side of the city with a visit to an estate outside Moscow. More details to come shortly.

After nearly a week of probing Russia’s Soviet history—from the depths of Moscow’s subterranean tunnels to the mysteries of space—it’s time to say farewell and head to the airport.