spain: canary islands: gran canaria: las palmas

My original plan for my New Years holidays was to go to Sri Lanka and the Maldives. As it has for the last five years, that plan fell apart. When I looked for flights, I found reasonably priced flights to the Canary Islands. They hadn't been on my radar at all, but I hadn't been there previously, so hey, why not?

The flights I booked were the cheapest option, which meant two connections, neither one of them very convenient. I left Moscow on a Thursday night and arrived at my destination Saturday morning.

I slept overnight in the airports of Bratislava and Las Palmas. I didn't need to sleep in the last airport, but my flight arrived in the night, after public transport had stopped. I didn't want to pay for a taxi that would get me to accomodation only in time to sleep half the night. Call me cheap.

Saturday morning I took a bus from the airport on Gran Canaria to Las Palmas, then walked to my hostel. I was able to check in early, after which I laid around for a bit, just because I could. I didn't have a guidebook, and I didn't have a plan for my three week holiday. Oh well.

A few hours later I walked to the beach, and found a place to lay out for a few hours. The beach was mostly black (the Canary Islands are volcanic islands, so black sand is pretty normal, if it is a sandy beach.) It was also windy, so it wasn't as relaxing as I wanted. Still, after being in Moscow, which had almost no direct sun during the month of December, any sun felt good.

After enjoying the sun, I started walking down the beach, to see how far I could go. Nearly everything along the way was a cafe or store geared toward tourists.

A bit down the way I found an exhibition of sand sculptures, which was fun to see. It was free, which surprised me.

Sunset that evening took place while I was out walking. It wasn't stunning, but seeing a sunset at all was nice. Of course I tried to take photos.

The next day I walked into the city center, to try and find a guidebook. The route shown on my phone took me along a street higher up so I could see out quite a bit. At this point, I wasn't really sold on the views of Las Palmas, and really hoped that whereva I went next would be better looking.

My walk also took me through a park with a statue of a giraffe and boy looking at the giraffe. I have no idea why it was there, but I still took the photo. The walk also took me past a fountain made by a frog spitting water.

I didn't end up finding the guidebook I wanted, much to my annoyance. I found a Spanish version of what I wanted, but not an English version. Argh. I bought ice cream to splurge, and to get over not finding the guidebook. (I can always justify ice cream, whether I should be doing so or not.)

After the shopping attempt, I found the Catedral de Santa Ana. Since the Canaries are part of Spain, of course there are a few churches to be seen. This particular church is said to be the most religious place of the Canary Islands, I suppose that is rather subjective. Wikipedia tells me the church was originally built during the 16^th century.

There was an entrance fee of 2 euro, the entrance is around the side of the church. The initial entry is actually just into a cloister area, where a museum has been set up. It was interesting to see paintings and photos of previous bishops, as the style of their vestments has changed quite a bit over the centuries.

The church itself was nothing spectacular, but not awful either. My favourite parts were the stained glass windows, which weren't very big or very intricate. I liked them because the light was streaming in and visible on the floor. Beautiful to see the light that way. Im a sucker for stained glass windows.

From there I walked back to my hostel, put on my bikini, and went back to the beach for a couple more hours of sun. This time around I found an area where it wasn't so windy.

The next morning I walked to the bus station where the airport bus had originally dropped me off. I got lucky with my timing and caught the bus I wanted just as it was leaving. Around 30 minutes later I hopped off, near a place called Caldera de Bandama.

As the entire set of Canary Islands are made up of volcanic islands, there are great opportunities for hiking. Visiting this no longer active volcano was one of those opportunities. I found a path and followed it, it took me through a residential area, to the lip of the caldera.

From there I decided to go right, and see where I could go. I didn't make it all the way around, I have no idea if that is even possible. When I got to the furthest point I chose to go, I could see a path down in the bottom of the crater, but I don't know where that particular path started.

I loved the views of the caldera as I followed along the lip, but I didn't love the scree that made up the path. It kept getting stuck in my shoes, which wasn't fun. Take 5 steps, stop and shake out the shoes, take 5 steps, stop and shake out the shoes. Rather annoying.

Eventually I headed back to the bus stop, I only had to wait about 10 minutes. Unfortunately, I got confused with the direction the bus would be going. I let a bus go by, thinking it would loop around and come back. It didn't, argh. I had to wait another hour for the next bus to come, and I spent the whole time thinking I was an idiot. Oh well.

When I got back to Las Palmas I walked along the east side of the city, more or less along the water. I saw a couple beaches of people playing volleyball, though they were mostly in the shade and wind by that point. The west side beaches have many more people in the afternoon.

I found an office for a ferry company, and bought a ticket (speaking only in Spanish, yay!!) for a ferry the next morning. Easy enough, then I walked over to the western side of town, and took in another sunset. This one was a whole lot better.

After dinner I walked back to my hostel and packed up. Since I knew I would be up early the next morning I didn't want to wake anyone else, and I wanted to sleep as long as I could. I warned my roommates that I would be up early, but would try to be as quiet as possible.

I don't think I woke anyone the next morning when I woke up and was out the door at 0600. I walked to the bus stop next to the ferry company office, then boarded their bus. 30 minutes later it departed and took everyone to the boat. Security and boarding were easy. I found a chair, then dozed a bit while the boat moved me from one island to another.

Las Palmas isn't a tourist destination. There are definitely hotels and restaurants geared toward tourists, but the beach isn't beautiful. It's the capital city of the island, and felt more like a place where people live a 'normal' life.

russia: sergiev posad

My first day trip in Russia, yahoo!! I looked at my guidebook, Sergiev Posad seemed like it was close enough to Moscow, with something worth seeing.

I met up with two women, one of whom works at another branch of my school, and one who works in my school. We met at Komsomolskaya metro station, (one of my favourites, one that never fails to amaze me every time I see it,) then went to find the suburban train station. It didn't take long, and the cashier even asked in English whether we wanted one way or round trip tickets.

We answered round trip, and were surprised at the ticket price, in that it was super cheap.

The train we wanted left in just fifteen minutes, which was awesome. It was an electric train, called an electrichka in Russian. It seemed as though we stopped every few minutes along the way, but the ride was smooth so I can't complain. Less than two hours later we arrived in Sergiev Posad.

The train station in Sergiev Posad was not big, it was basically just a platform. After getting ourselves oriented, we started walking. Not too far away we saw the bus station, I asked Caroline and Claire to stop and take a selfie with me. 

I wanted to have us in the photo with the city name, which was on the front of the bus station.

We kept going, heading in the direction of the main sight in town. On the way there, we stopped at a mostly frozen pond, it looked as if it would be perfect to play hockey when totally frozen. The area that wasn't frozen was full of ducks going every which way.

From the small bridge going over the water we could see a 'tree' with lots of padlocks. It was an interesting take on the idea of a bridge of locks. Every time I see one of these things, I wonder how many of the couples who closed a lock together are still together.

Near this 'tree' was a pair of statues, of Peter and Fevronia. (I had to look up the names, as Fevronia isn't exactly a name that rolls off your tongue or sticks in your memory.)

Then we arrived at the main sight of Sergiev Posad, the Trinity Lavra of St Sergius. It was founded in 1337, when St Sergius built a wooden hut. Obviously, over the years other buildings were built. The way in which this monastery was built was copied many times over the years, to create other monasteries around the country.

We approached the monastery from the side, so we had to walk along the walls for a bit. 

While walking we passed a WW2 memorial, complete with eternal flame.

Outside the grounds of the monastery we found two small churches, we entered both. Neither one of them was noteworthy. Perhaps the most noteworthy part was a stroller parked outside one of them, as it had skis instead of wheels. It also had hand warmers attached to the hand rail. Genius!

We got to the entrance of the monastery and walked right in. As far as we could tell, there was no entry ticket to buy. Entry is through a gate in the bottom of a bell tower, the gate was painted with frescoes.

As soon as we walked in, I realized each building in the complex was painted differently. One of them was actually painted with a geometric pattern of sorts, definitely not what I would ever expect to see on the outside of a church. Very photogenic, to say the least.

The geometric church was the first building we entered, the inside was painted as well. The ceiling was covered in frescoes, though they weren't very brightly coloured.

The next church we entered was more of a memorial chapel. We learned that there is a 24 hour a day memorial taking place in one corner.

The memorial is for the man for whom the monastery is named, St Sergius. There was a queue of people waiting to kiss the coffin. We did not join the queue, we watched for a few minutes then walked out.

All these churches are gathered around a small central platz. In the middle of the platz was a small fountain, I presume it runs on holy water. Since we were visiting in December, it was not running.

On another side of the platz was a big blue church, I presume it was the main church of the monastery. We walked in and loved the interior.

The whole thing was painted with brightly coloured frescoes. Love love love.

At this point we felt as if we'd seen everything there was to see. We walked out of the same bell tower through which we'd entered, and went looking for a cafe. There weren't many options, we ended up settling for one nearby. I ended up having the best tasting fruit tea I've ever had.

From the cafe we walked around the block, just to see another part of the town. We ended up seeing another church, the interior of which smelled like wet dog, probably from the wet wool clothing worn by various parishioners. 

We also saw a few government looking buildings, one of which had a big mosaic as decoration on the front facade.

Yet another section of town had newer looking buildings, including a couple souvenir shops. We found magnets in one of these :)

From there we walked up the main street, hoping to visit the toy museum. Unfortunately, we picked the wrong day, as it ended up being closed when we arrived. What kind of toy museum is closed on a Sunday? We hoped it was just a one off, and we were just unlucky. I always thought the typical day for museums to be closed is Monday. 

That was the end of our day, so we walked back to the train station. We boarded the train, thinking we were all good. Unfortunately, we weren't. Even though we were sure we'd bought round trip tickets when leaving Moscow, we hadn't. (We never figured out how the mix up happened, since the lady in Moscow had asked in English, not Russian.) We each had to buy another ticket, plus pay a 'penalty' for buying tickets on the train. Sigh, lesson learned. Fortunately, that was the worst thing that happened during the day. Yay for day trips!

russia: moscow in november

November turned out to be a month of rain and gray skies. Not so fun. That being said, it didn't stop me from getting out and trying to see a bit of the city from time to time.

Throughout the month timing for the mornings worked out that I got to see a number of beautiful sunrises. They got later and later though, rather quickly, much to my dismay.

One Saturday I met up with Claire, in the Arbat area. We started our day with visits to a coffee shop and an American chain donut shop. I'm not going to publicly admit the names of either store, but suffice it to say, this is a very international city.

We took the metro to another area of the city, trying to find a spot called the Alley of Leaders. It was originally opened in 2016, with the busts of 33 historic figures who have ruled Russia since the 9^th century. A couple months ago 7 more busts were added.

Not everyone in this 'alley' is fully supported by the world. Stalin, for example is not universally loved, nor is Lenin. Other famous names include Gorbachev, Brezhnev, and Khrushchev.

We wandered through the small garden, the busts are lined up in two rows. Not surprisingly, we only recognized a few of them by sight. 

For an unknown (to me) reason, one of the busts was just a head, the body part had no clothing. Very strange.

We left the alley and found public transport to get us to our next stop: a museum. We'd made plans to meet up with Shawn and Tania and a couple others to see a temporary exhibit at Garage Museum. The exhibit was of works by Hurakami Takashi. If you don't recognize the name, this is the guy who puts smiley faces everywhere, many many times in a single piece. He is probably most famous for smiling flowers.

Takashi was born in 1962, and is still living. His work has been displayed all over the world, and even though I didn't know his name ahead of time, it sounded like a fun exhibit to see. It was fun, I'm glad we went. We arrived early enough in the day that we didn't have to wait in a queue. By the time our group left, there was quite a queue, both for the ticket booth and then to enter the exhibit.

After leaving the museum, all of us agreed to go together to a Korean restaurant for dinner. Yum. I ordered too much, as I usually do when I get the chance to have good food.

Another day in the middle of the month I decided to go see a house in which Gorky lived for a few years. I was disappointed when I walked in, as I discovered there was a special entry fee for foreigners. There was also a fee for permission to take photos. How annoying. I'm not a human ATM, I live here and earn local money. Argh.

Maxim Gorky was a Russian/Soviet writer and a political activist. He was also nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature five times, not too shabby. His political activism originally had him supporting Lenin, but then he became a Lenin critic. 

Not surprisingly, he was exiled due to these views. He was only allowed and encouraged to return when Lenin died and Stalin came to power. Gorky was born in 1868 and died in 1936.

Throughout the house, the rooms were set up as they might've been when he lived there. I don't think all the furniture was original from when he lived there, but it was all in the same style he would've known.

I liked seeing all the books, and the tables like he might've used. The part I liked best was the staircase, it was just really nice.

On another Saturday I met up with Claire again. She and I had realized we got along quite well, and were both keen to explore Moscow, and much of Russia. Yay for exploring friends!

We met in the Arbat area of the city, then started walking. We walked across the Moscow River, and kept going for quite a while. I think we walked for two or three hours, paying attention to traffic, the architecture of the buildings we could see, and people on the street. Moscow is such a big city, with different atmospheres in different areas. You never know what you might see.

We walked all the way to Park Pobedy, which I think would translate to Victory Park in English.

By the time we arrived we were already losing daylight, so the photo we'd wanted to take with the victory arch wasn't possible. Well, I guess it would've been possible, but the light was terrible at that point.

We crossed the street and gazed up at the Victory Museum and the obelisk standing to honour those who died in wars. They were all lit up, we both liked the way it looked. Eventually we want to go into the museum, but it was cold enough at that point that we just weren't in the mood. 

Does that make sense, even though going inside would've gotten us out of the cold?

The following weekend Claire and I met up again to go back to Izmailovo. Both of us had specific gifts we were looking to buy, and that's a great place to get better prices for souvenirs. I was happy to find a matrioshka frog, perfect for my sister.

Toward the end of the month I fell down stairs at work, majorly spraining my ankle. It wasn't pretty, and hurt a LOT. I barely moved the rest of the day, sitting on a chair with wheels as much as possible. 

I went to a doctor a week later, the doctor yelled at me for having been on my foot at all, ooops. Sigh, just call me Grace.

It was not a great end to the month health wise, but overall still a good month! What will December bring?