russia: istra again

One of my most favourite church ceilings I've ever seen was in Istra, a small town not far from Moscow. Claire and I loved our half day trip to the city last year, and we kept talking about the church, so I figured Angela should see it too.

Angela and I figured out that for at least one week, we both had Wednesday afternoon off. I left work right at noon, and booked it to one of the train stations in Moscow. Angela raced out of school as well, it was more of an issue as to whether she would get there on time. (Angela works at the branch of school that is on the edge of Moscow.)

Fortunately Angela made it, and buying tickets was easy. We hopped on the next elektrichka going to Istra, and arrived about 90 minutes later.

I was excited to go back to Istra in better weather. Though Claire and I had enjoyed our visit, we had no enjoyed wading through snow and slush, without a clear path on a sidewalk. When Angela and I arrived we found clear streets and sidewalks, and lots of fall colour in the trees.

Since I'd already been there it was faster to get to where we were going. We walked up the main street, stopping twice: once for a team photo with the same giant pinecone, and once for the huge WW2 memorial of a plane taking off. Even though I'd taken the same photos before, they looked completely different this time because of weather and seasonal differences.

It didn't take us long to get to the New Jerusalem Monastery. Since we were visiting on a Tuesday afternoon, it wasn't at all crowded. In fact there were very few people around, which always makes me happy. I already knew the spots for the best views, hahahaha.

Angela liked the monastery as much as Claire and I had, though she isn't as obsessed with ceilings as much as I am. Even though I'd seen this ceiling before, I was thrilled to see it again, and still walked around with my head bent backward. Soooo beautiful, at least I thought so.

We walked around the walls, and I told Angela the story of dropping my mitten last time, thank goodness nothing like that happened during this visit.

After walking all over the property we headed back in the direction of the train station. Just like in my last visit, we stopped at another war memorial, it was actually visible this time. (Last time it was covered in snow.) We also stopped at the statue of Lenin, which is one of the smaller statues I've seen around the country.

By the time we got back to the train station we figured out our timing had been perfect: we only had to wait around 15 minutes for the next train. This ended up being a good thing in more ways than one, as the next train was a good couple hours later!

Yay for a half day trip in the middle of the week :)