russia: abramtsevo

As long as I live in Russia I want to continue exploring the country, especially the areas near where I'm living. I asked my traveling girls who was up for a day trip to Abramtsevo, Claire and Caroline were happy to come along.

We met on a metro platform and made our way up to the commuter train area of one of the main train stations in Moscow. When we bought our tickets we double and triple checked to make sure they were round trip as we didn't want to make the same mistake we'd made when going to Sergiev Posad.

Our electrichka train arrived about 90 minutes later at Abramtsevo. There is no town here, it's just an old estate that later became an artists colony, and is now an open air museum reserve. The stopping point for the train was more of a platform than a station.

The train platform is basically in the middle of nowhere, it wasn't immediately obvious how to get to the museum area. Fortunately we found a couple signs with maps geared toward visitors, showing us where to go. (Thank goodness, as Google maps wasn't at all helpful either.)

We followed the path through the trees, it was lovely. At one point we heard piped in elevator music, which seemed a bit odd and very out of place. At another point we heard a woodpecker, which was a lot neater to hear.

We crossed water, and noticed an area of the water that was FULL of tadpoles. I've never seen that many all in one place at one time. Squirming around, ick.

Not too much later we got to the entry gates of Abramtsevo. Figuring out which entry ticket to buy wasn't completely straightforward. There was no ticket that covered everything, at least not so far as we could tell. 

One option allowed us onto the property, but nothing else. Another allowed us into the grand house if we joined a tour. A third allowed us into five buildings on the property, but not the grand house. Another option was a photography ticket, if we wanted to take photos inside. Since the tour of the grand house was in russian, we opted to skip that, and just look into five buildings. We also opted not to buy the photography ticket.

Have I ever mentioned how much I dislike extra tickets for photography permission? It's just an excuse to charge more money, why not just put it in the basic ticket and add another 5-10% to the entry fee? 

In some Asian countries they do this and the only people checked to see if they have the extra photography ticket are obvious foreigners, argh.

The first building we entered had originally been the kitchen of the main house. I don't remember why it was separate. The next building had a display of art, most of which was under glass/plastic covers, standing on columns. Even so, the docent in this building asked us to put our purses in lockers so we didn't accidentally knock anything over. (Sometimes I think Russians assume that any foreigner is an idiot.)

Just outside this building was a bench, covered in mosaic design. Very very pretty. Unfortunately we couldn't sit on the bench, as the whole thing was surrounded by a glass case. I suppose that's one way to protect it, but it was originally there so people could sit and enjoy the view; I wish we could've done the same.

We walked down a hill, enjoying the views back up the hill toward the main house. At the bottom of the hill was a big pond, which was still very quiet, and free of other visitors. Obviously, the perfect place to take a team photo. We noticed that one of the trees around the pond had been chewed on by a beaver, to the point that it was getting close to falling over. 

I didn't see other evidence of a beaver, but there must have been something.

After a bit we went back up the hill, to what had originally been a bathhouse for the estate. I would never have guessed this, based on how it was decorated, but the decor was quite nice. There was a lot of carved wood inside, as well as around the gable on the roof. Beautiful artisanship. I think it was all supposed to be typical middle class decoration?

The next building we saw wasn't anything that had been used regularly, at least not that we could tell. 

Called the house on chicken legs, it was a small building on stilts. It didn't really look like chicken legs, but we could see where the name had come from. It wasn't open, and was surrounded by a fence. I'm not sure what the purpose was for this building, if there even was one.

Not far from the house on chicken legs was a church. Since the estate was quite old, it wasn't surprising that a church was on the property. During Communist times I imagine the church wasn't used for religious purposes, but I don't know. 

They gave us an information sheet telling information on each painting in the iconostasis, but it was too much for me to read all at once.

After the church, we realized we'd seen everything there was to see on the property, except the main house. We sat on a bench for a while, having a snack and appreciating being out in nature. On the way out we spotted a small shop selling souvenirs, which was the perfect place to buy a magnet.

We exited the property and walked down the street, but didn't find anything other than a hotel.

I can't imagine booking a room in this hotel, as there was nothing in the area other than this museum reserve. Oh well.

We walked back down the elevator music path back to the train platform, another train came along within 20 minutes. You can't get better than Russian public transport for day trips :)