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. 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.

Take the morning and afternoon to relax, explore, and start saying goodbye to Moscow at your leisure. After lunch, we’ll regroup for an adventure to Star City—home to a top-secret cosmonaut training facility absent from any map until 2008. We’ll make our way to the training center where cosmonauts such as Yuri Gagarin cut their teeth. Though the city has changed very little since its conception in 1959, the center continues to train cosmonauts and astronauts. We’ll tour the Soyuz spaceship mission simulation and control rooms, the training room focused on International Space Station exercises, and the world’s largest centrifuge facility. Most notably, we’ll have the chance to chat with cosmonauts-in-training about their experiences, and view a training session. In the evening, we’ll come back down to Earth and head into downtown Moscow for a final meal together, followed by drinks at a beloved haunt in Chistye Prudy, where we’ll raise a glass to all that we’ve learned.

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. Alternatively, if you’d like to continue exploring, join us for a three-day extension into the countryside. Today will be dedicated to more deeply understanding the dark side of Soviet history, learning about the people who suffered immensely under what’s come to be known as the Red Terror. We’ll begin the day after breakfast with a visit to the Museum of Contemporary Russian History, where we’ll learn about the day-to-day life experienced by Russian civilians during the Cold War. After a lunch break, we’ll head to the Gulag Museum. Founded in 2001 by Anton Antonov-Ovseenko, a well-known historian and writer who was imprisoned at one of Stalin's labor camps, the museum offers a glimpse into the mass repression under the USSR, following the Gulag prison system's rise, development, and decline. Following dinner, we’ll climb aboard a kupeyny carriage, a comfortable overnight sleeper train, dreaming of cheesy khachapuri as we hurtle through the darkness toward the city of Galich.

After a cozy night aboard the kupe, we’ll arrive in Galich in time to tour the city and eat breakfast in the former mayor’s 19th-century home. Then, we’ll venture deep into the taiga to visit an ecological farm and preserve home to horses, boars, pheasants, and Altai wapiti. With the guidance of the experienced farm team, we’ll meet some of these creatures up close and learn how antler velvet is harvested from these free-range red deer. In the afternoon, we’ll head to the Astashovo Manor House Museum for lunch. Straight out of a Russian fairy tale, this stately wooden mansion was originally built as an extravagant gesture to woo a lover—but, following the Bolshevik Revolution, it was confiscated and used to screen propaganda films, and eventually fell to ruin. After exploring the recently restored manor and its museum dedicated to the pre-revolutionary life of workers, you’ll have the option to set out on a five-mile hike on mostly flat paths through snowy forests full of abandoned buildings, old churches, and lynx lairs. Alternatively, kick back at the manor and explore the thousands of historical treasures it houses, or partake in a cooking lesson with the manor’s chef, whipping up pelmenis, pierogis, and more. After dinner, accompanied by a local accordionist, opt to enjoy a traditional banya, go on a walk, or soak in a heated jacuzzi under a blanket of stars.

After breakfast at the manor, we’ll set out on a canoe trip along the Viga River. Beginning in the nearby village of Goltsovo, we’ll gently paddle our way to another Russian izba, Pogorelovo Manor, where we’ll savor a picnic lunch. Then, we’ll board our canoes once again and head to Sluda, a village full of abandoned, late-19th-century homes perched along the banks of the river. We’ll explore the area alongside some of its few remaining residents, learning about the history of the village, perusing one woman’s collection of rustic antiques, and meeting up with a local beekeeper. Later, we’ll share tea with our hosts, served with honey fresh from our new friend’s hives, before boarding another sleeper train, where we’ll tuck into dinner and settle in for the night as we make our way back to Moscow.

This morning, it's time to say farewell and head on to your next destination. If you’d like to extend your stay in the area, we’d be more than happy to provide recommendations for things to do and see on your own. Until the next adventure!