February 25-27 Moscow: Red Square and more . . . After we had booked our Iberia flights from Moscow to Malaga and back, we were told that the Tajik Air return flight from Moscow to Dushanbe was cancelled. The Malaga to Moscow connecting flight could not be changed so, no option but to book a Tajik Air flight for the following day and stay in Moscow two nights on the way home. Given previous experiences transiting through Moscow this wasn’t too appealing but it morphed into a really good stopover. Moscow was blanketed in a foot of snow. The Domodedovo Airport Hotel, five minutes by shuttle bus from the airport, was fine, shielded for the most part by a forest of silver birch. Next day, we took the express train from the airport into the center of Moscow and slipped and skidded our way to Red Square. Along the way we whooped in amazement as we discovered a wool shop, where we bought the circular knitting needles Rodney has had everyone hunting for for months, and a Columbia store for gear. We’d had no luck in finding these items in Spain. Red Square was amazing (though rather smaller than I expected) – the domes of St Basil’s just as weird as they are in the photos, Lenin’s tomb, the Kremlin, and the very up-market three-storied arcaded Gum department store – a great place for coffee, people-watching and a quick read of the (free) Moscow Times.