When it comes to tourism in Russia, the cities of Moscow and St Petersburg are undoubtedly the country's most popular destinations.
Rightly so, both are politically and culturally central to Russia and they collectively boast nearly 700 museums.
Discovery Russia CEO Varvara Topolyanskaya said to SBS Russian that up to 50 per cent of the routes booked by football fans travelling from Australia to Russia include Moscow even though the Socceroos are not playing there.
Here are some of our handy tips to getting the most out of a visit to Moscow:
Understand the city map
Unlike most modern cities, Australia included, Moscow has a circular layout and looks like a ring, inside a ring, inside a ring with a fortress at the centre that protects its heart. This fortress is called the Kremlin, which means "fortress inside a city".
This design can be seen in most Russian cities and was developed 800-1200 A.C with the intention of protecting the city's palaces and cathedrals from outside attacks.
Moscow consists of four rings built outside the Kremlin: the smallest of these is the Boulevard ring (Boulvarnoe koltso) with 10 boulevards chained in a nine kilometre green band; then the Garden ring (Sadovoe koltso) going at the brim of the Moscow central district, and two more built solely for transport.
Then you have the main streets which shoot off from the Kremlin and cut through those rings.
Given this circularity, the best way to sight see is to jump on a trolleybus B, called the ‘little bug’. These do a full circle of the Garden ring and tickets are relatively cheap. Evenings are the best time for this trip with less cars on the road.
Visit the Metro
The Moscow underground is one of the longest metro systems in the world. It preserves its historic value with some of the stations showcasing the art-deco in the Soviet realm.
Travelling through this functional art gallery can be time consuming but you can sweep through it by taking the circular line.
Kievskaya, Belorusskaya, Novoslobodskaya and Komsomolskaya, all built in 1950s, present a contrast to the pre-war era Revolution Square (Ploshchad Revolutsii) station on the dark blue line with the famous polished bronze dog and soldier monument.
48 stations are recognised as sites of historic heritage.
Often visitors forget to look up and miss the ceiling treasures of mosaics representing the scenes from the Soviet industrialisation life.
Over its long history, the Metro has witnessed periods where it served as a place of safety, and times where it saw great danger.
During WWII it was used as a shelter to Moscow's citizens from bombings, while in more modern times the Metro has seen several terrorist attacks.
Nevertheless, art remains a constant in this world beneath Moscow's streets.
Stay connected
While trains in the Moscow Metro might be inferior to the Western or Asian models, the wifi that services the huge area is quite outstanding.
For the World Cup, Moscow City Council plans to expand its wifi coverage even further and offer free internet connection to a whopping 99 percent of the capital.
The hotspots can be found in parks, museums, cafes and central streets.
However, in early April, a major leak in the wifi network in the Moscow Metro resulted in users having their phone numbers collected.
Since then, the network operator has offered the assurance that personal data will be more secure.
What if I don’t speak Russian?
Firstly, during the World Cup there will be no shortage of languages spoken by the local tour guides – you can choose from 24 languages offered on the official tourist sites dotted around the city center.
The deputy mayor for Transport and Road Infrastructure Development, Maxim Liksutov said effort has been taken to make sure the metro is no exception.
Around 400 metro staff members in 76 stations can speak English.
The ticket offices will be marked with the stickers ‘We speak English!’
To get around by public transport you need the travel card ‘Troika’ which can be bought at any metro station.
A special World Cup edition will also be sold in some of the hotels in Moscow and St Petersburg and will include trips in both cities.
Don’t get lost
The maps.me App has designed a special edition of its routes for the World Cup in eight languages which include all the host cities.
It allows you to download the data for the particular city with all the landmarks and places of interest with a brief description of each.
You can also choose the most convenient walking route to get from point A to point B and see the most of what it can offer.
Challenge Russian driving
If you've seen the viral Youtube videos of Russian driving and still haven't been scared off the prospect of getting behind the wheel on a snow-covered road populated by Russian drivers, there are car-sharing services that are available to anyone with a driver's licence.
At least six out of 15 car-sharing operators, YouDrive, Delimobil (already in English), BelkaCar, EasyRide, Car5 and Carlion will have its services translated into English before the World Cup.
If you register on one of these systems with the electronic copy of your passport and licence, you can track and then pick up an available car.
At the moment the price per minute is set at around AUD .18 cents.
