russia: moscow: the Kremlin and Bulgari jewels

Welcome to another walkabout Wednesday. 

Since there are a million and a half museums in Moscow, it makes sense that many of them have temporary exhibitions.

The Kremlin in central Moscow is a sight worth seeing all on its own, but but it is not just a bunch of churches and a small garden. 

It's a museum as well. 

I'm not sure when I heard about it, but I knew there was a temporary exhibition by Bulgari. 

The exhibit was showing lots of different pieces of jewelry in a couple rooms of different buildings in the Kremlin.

To see the jewels, I had to pay the regular entrance fee to the Kremlin, but nothing extra. I followed the signs, the exhibit wasn't hard to find.

Basically this post is the chance to show pictures of shiny sparkly colourful things.

I'm not a fan of the snake pieces, though I can appreciate the artistry involved in their making.

Another thing I can appreciate: the number of people allowed in each of the rooms at any given time was regulated, so it never got too crowded. 

Granted, it was a Wednesday afternoon so I don't think it ever would've gotten that crowded, but on weekends the regulation is probably awesome.

russia: vladimir

When my cousin came to visit last year we went to a town called Suzdal for a weekend. To get to Suzdal we had to change modes of transport in Vladimir, which is also a popular town to visit. During that trip we didn't get to visit Vladimir, so Claire and I put it on the calendar for this year.

Vladimir is one of the so called Golden Ring towns, and is 200 kilometers east of Moscow. Almost 350,000 people call Vladimir home, though during our visit it didn't feel like that big of a city.

Vladimir is an old city, though there is a debate about when it was founded. For a long time 1108 was accepted as the year Vladimir was founded.

Then a few people said 'hey, Vladimir the Great came through the area in 990, so that should be the proper city foundation date.' From what I understand, most people think 1108 is the correct year, as other historical documents say that the city of Suzdal (founded in 1024,) looks down on Vladimir as being a young town. That being said, the city council of Vladimir passed a law in 2005 designating 990 as the founding year. To make a lomg story short, Vladimir is old.

During the 12^th and 13^th centuries Vladimir was the capital of what is now Russia, and this was the Golden Age of the city. As there was a lot of political power in the city, there were lots of churches too. (Religion and power still go together around the world, this has always been the case.)

Masons and architects from all over Europe worked on the churches in Vladimir.

It is easy to get to Vladimir, we took an early morning train on Saturday, arriving around 0830. It was only a 20 minute walk to the flat we'd booked, and I was excited to learn that the landlord spoke great English. I think he was excited to have foreigners rent his place, and get to practice English with native speakers.

The first place we noticed when we left the flat was the next door sports stadium. Even though it was pretty chilly, there was a guy running laps on the track. I took a couple photos where I pretended to be running, that's as athletic as I am these days.

We walked into the city center, or rather the historical city center. The next stop was a big stela in the middle of a platz, a war memorial. On another side of the platz was a big city sign, which is normally something I'd love. Sadly, there was a big tour bus parked in front of this one, there was no way to get even a halfway decent photo.

From there we headed toward the Church of the Annunciation, which is probably the most recognized church in the city. There is an entry fee, argh. Thankfully, there was no special entry fee for foreigners. It was rather dark inside, and rather cold. I wish there had been more light, because the painting all over was quite nice.

On the other side of the church was an overlook, allowing a view over quite a large city. Vladimir is mostly up on a bluff, so if you're in the right place there are some great landscape views. Near this overlook was a big memorial, we were lucky enough to get there just before a big Chinese tour group wandered through.

Heading back to the main street we found the Lenin statue, which was surprisingly small, or maybe just set to be the same size as the man himself was, quite small.

We kept going on the main street, getting all the way to the so called Golden Gate, which is actually painted white. It sits in the middle of a traffic circle, I think it's the last standing former gate to the city. 

(Like so many other Russian cities, Vladimir was a fortress of sorts, with city walls and gates and such.)

Inside this gate is a small, but really well done war museum. Good pictures, good information, well organized.

The second museum we visited falls into the 'quirky museum' category: the museum of spoons. There were two rooms of spoons, organized into different categories. They were mostly organized by country, with occasional smaller subsets, like the royal family of the United Kingdom. There was also a section with Olympic spoons, and one with cat spoons. Angela was happy to have her photo taken with a painted maple tree covered in Canadian spoons.

Not far from the spoon museum was another overlook, this one with a view over to the Church of the Annunxciation. Very pretty. 

By the time we saw this view it was getting dark, so we didn't stay long. There are a few benches scattered around, I bet it's a nice place to hang out in warmer weather.

We walked all the way back to the flat after dinner, which ended up being a longer walk than we expected, ooops. Oh well.

The next morning we packed up and gave the key back to the landlord. After stopping in a supermarket for breakfast to go and snacks, we found a nearby bus stop and waited.

It didn't take long for the bus we wanted to come by, it took us to the nearby small town of Bogolyubovo. The bus ride wasn't long, only 20 minutes of so. It wasn't the town itself we wanted to see, but rather a nearby church.

My phone showed me a path to walk to get to the church, so we started walking. Unfortunately, this path turned out to be the wrong way to go. We got to train tracks, and no way to cross. Argh. We turned back, went down the street a ways and tried another way, which ended up working out.

There is a long name for this church, but I don't think many people know it, and even fewer people use it: the Church of the Intercession of the Holy Virgin on the Nerl River. The few times I've heard of it, it has been referred to as the Church on the Nerl. It is built at the meeting point of two rivers, the Nerl and the Klyazma.

Wikipedia tells me the date of the building of this church is unknown, but they know the dates of some of the wall carvings, which is the 12^th century. 

So the church is from at least the 12^th century, and probably older.

We were there near the end of November, when the surrounding field was covered with a couple inches of snow, making everything beautiful. There is a pond just 'under' the church, which was frozen when we visited, it was a perfect place to take a team photo.

The church itself isn't big, and honestly not all that interesting. We came to see the outside basically only because of where it is located, not for any historical or educational reasons.

It didn't take us long to take all the photos we wanted to take, then we went back the same way we came. It was easy to find the bus stop on the other side of the road, and again we didn't have to wait long for a bus to come along and take us back to Vladimir.

There was another museum in Vladimir that we'd wanted to see, something with jewels I think. It was located in an old church, so the setting was supposed to be quite nice. Unfortunately, when we got to the front door, it was locked and the whole thing was closed. How is a museum closed on a Sunday? Argh. From there we walked to yet another church, a Catholic church. Go figure, as we got there we realized a service was taking place, so we didn't feel comfortable taking more than a couple steps inside the doors.

At that point we felt as if we'd seen everything we could, so we went to a cafe for dinner, then to another cafe to hang out for another hour. It was an easy walk back to the train station, then home to Moscow.

I can see myself going back to Vladimir, but definitely in a different time of year.

russia: moscow assorted

I know I've said it before, but Moscow has a lot to see and do. Since the three of us had only done a day trip the day before, we decided to meet up again on Sunday to get out and explore. During the first year Claire and I were in Moscow, the city was preparing for hosting the World Cup, which meant that there was a lot of construction, which was not pretty.

One of the places we wanted to see when it was finished is called the Exhibition of Achievements of National Economy. The English acronym is VDNkh, or VDNH. 

Even in Russian everyone calls it by the acronym. It's basically a permanent place for trade shows and an amusement park, and goodness knows what else.

There are a whole bunch of buildings on the property, many of them were decorated in the styles of various republics of the former Soviet Union. In winter, an ice skating rink is set up; in summer there are several fountains and the landscaping is well done.

Angela hadn't seen the area at all, so it seemed like a good plan for the three of us to walk around. We met up at the metro station, then started walking. This was November, so construction of the skating rink hadn't yet begun, but it was coming soon. This was November, so the weather was crappy, but that's life.

I wanted to take a team photo with the Lenin statue, but Claire and Angela vetoed that idea. Apparently they'd had their fill of Lenin the day before, when we explored Gorky Leninskie. Even so, I asked Angela to take my photo with the main man.

It was nice to see most of the buildings fully renovated, I loved seeing the design styles of each former Soviet republic. I'd like to go back in better weather to take photos with each building.

At the back end of the property are several museums. One is an aquarium, another is a space museum. I'd already visited the cosmonaut museum, which is about the history of space in Russia. It's about the people, and the program. The museum in VDNH is about the science of space.

As seems so common in museums around Russia, there were several ticket options, none of which seemed obvious as the one we wanted. 

We didn't know which was best for us, so when the lady asked, I spoke in English and said "we want to see the museum." She understood, told us a price, we paid, and that was it.

The museum had a lot of models and detailed descriptions, and was well organized. I'm not much of a science person, so most of the information went right over my head, but I appreciated the work that went into the curation of the whole thing. 

Even though I didn't understand a lot of what I was seeing, I still took plenty of photos.

At the back of the museum there is a beautiful stained glass dome, with a huge 'globe' hanging down. Beautiful and photogenic.

After the museum Claire and I showed Angela the joy of the grilled cheese cafe we'd discovered the year before. So good.

The following Wednesday I went for my afternoon walkabout, to see a building mentioned on social media. Called Dominion Tower, it's an office building. The outside of the building doesn't indicate that the inside is of any interest.

When I got there I realized it wasn't a tower at all, that was just the name. It was several stories tall, but it was wider than it was tall. 

There is a photo to be taken of the escalators and open atrium in the middle of the building. Very photogenic, but not interesting in any other way.

On Friday, my kids had a field trip to the oceanarium on one edge of the city. I absolutely loved the penguins, though I hated their living conditions. There were a whole bunch of aquariums in the building, most of which were too small for the fish they held. I love that my kids got to see something they don't get to see every day, but I hated those living conditions.

russia: moscow oblast: gorki leninskie

Not only does Moscow have plenty to see and do within city limits, there are gazillions of places to go and see nearby. Since all three of us are interested in Lenin, we decided to go see Gorky Leninskie, the family estate where Lenin lived out his last few years.

Gorky Leninskie (which has a heap of different spellings, I'll probably use a few of them during this post.) is only 10 km south of Moscow city limits now, though I suppose that distance was a lot bigger back when Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (Ulyanovsk) was living.

Obviously, the estate didn't always belong to Lenin's family. Gorki originally belonged to different noblemen and their families, no one in particular held onto it for very long. When the Soviet government officially moved to Moscow in 1918, it nationalized the property, and declared it to be Lenin's dacha.

Lenin himself spent a lot of time on the estate as he healed from an assasination attempt, then became a full time resident as his health got worse in his last few years. After he died, (in 1924,) it was officially renamed Gorki Leninskie, and became one of many museums dedicated to Lenin.

To get to the area, we chose to take the elektrichka, which let us off at a station called Leninskaya. This station was built for the express purpose of transporting Lenin's body from the estate just after he died.

We got off the train, and tried to go inside the station, only to discover it was locked, and seemed to be abandoned. There was a ticket booth on one side of the building, and that was open, but the main part of the station was completely closed. I wonder when this happened, and why it isn't kept open as a place to visit for Lenin enthusiasts.

We peeked in through windows, and saw a statue of the main man in the middle, with an otherwise decrepit interior. I was able to take a good photo through the window, but I really wish we'd been able to go inside. I wonder if that is ever possible? Someone must have the key....

From there we walked. By this point Angela and Claire were long since resigned to following me down random roads and highways, this was another one of those days. One of the gates to the property was off a wide road, though I think the only traffic this road gets is people coming to visit this property. 

The road is lined by trees, which looked good even without leaves.

We got to the entry gate and paid the fee to get into the grounds. Not too far away was the first of several Lenin statues on the property. Also not far from that particular entrance was the first museum of the day.

The first museum we visited on the property was a copy of the offices and apartment Lenin had in the Kremlin. We were surprised to learn that one of Lenin's sisters lived in the flat with him, she lived with him for most of his life.

Seeing this museum required joining a tour, which was (of course,) in Russian. We told our guide that we didn't speak or understand Russian, but that didn't stop her from starting out with her normal spiel in each room. We tried to understand for about 5 minutes, then gave up. We started wandering around each room and taking the photos that interested us, basically ignoring the guide.

She figured out that we truly didn't know what she was saying by the second room, so she started giving us three or four simple sentences of information for each room, then standing back and waiting for our photography to finish. 

This ended up being a great way of visiting the museum, though she did try to get us moving along faster than we wanted to go.

We saw a copy of Stalin's conference room, maps in use back then, a library of sorts, a kitchen and dining room, etc... It was actually a well done museum.

The next building on the estate was the grand house in which the family lived. I'm guessing this is what the government said was a dacha. In my head, the word dacha translates to cottage, and this most definitely was not a cottage.

We had to pay another entrance fee, and join another (Russian) tour. We weren't the only ones on this tour, but we were the only non Russian speakers, so we did the same thing we'd done before: ignore the guide and take the photos we wanted to take.

The house was quite big. It was neat to see the different rooms, decorations, and furniture. It was while going through this home that we truly understood that Lenin was not a man of the people, not at all. His family was upper middle class at the very least. Such a disappointment.

Part of the tour of this manor was the chance to look into the garage, where the (in)famous Rolls Royce Phantom is kept. This particular car was on skis!

After the manor we walked all the way to the last museum on the estate, only to find that it also required a tour to visit, and the next tour wasn't for another 90 minutes. I really wanted to see the main entry stairs, with a statue of Lenin and Soviet seals and such, but just that wasn't worth the wait. Sigh. If I go back, I'll plan a visit around tour times for this museum. 

Instead we walked the grounds right next to this building. There were a bunch of statues outside, but they were all covered with plastic to protect them from the upcoming winter weather. I really need to go back when the statues are uncovered.

We found one more Lenin statue, which was good for another team photo, then exited the grounds. This was basically the opposite side of the grounds from where we'd entered, but it was the more inhabited side of the estate. It was easy to find a bus and make our way back to Moscow.

A great day trip, and educational in ways we hadn't expected.

russia: sergiev posad again

One of the best day trips Claire and I did during our first year in Moscow was to a small town called Sergiev Posad, about 80 kilometers slightly northeast of Moscow. The town (which has a surprising population of just over 110,000,) exists because a large monastery was built there, the Trinity Lavra.

The monastery was established (according to Wikipedia,) in 1337. It is still one of the biggest monasteries in the entire country, though I don't know if that means by size or by number of people living/working in the monastery. Another Wikipedia page tells me there are more than 300 monks working here.

Like most monasteries, this one started out as a simple (wooden) church, with other buildings added over time, including protective walls. It is named for St Sergius, (who is the patron saint of the Russian state. Apparently the way this monastery started and continued to grow was a model for the followers of St Sergius, they went on to build 400 other similar monasteries around the country.

The monastery was closed from 1920 to 1946, mainly because the Soviet government was not a fan of religious institutions other than the state itself. Stalin allowed the monastery to reopen in 1946, and it was the seat of the Moscow patriarchate until 1983, when that designation moved to a monastery in Moscow.

I really like the ceiling in the main church of the monastery, and I love the way light comes through the windows of this particular church.

It was easy for us to catch an elektrichka to the town; since Claire and I knew where to go it was much easier than our first visit. The weather was also better, which always makes a difference.

We walked around the grounds, looking in every building we could. Claire and I saw the onion domes of the church in the middle and felt as if the paint had faded in the last year, the blue didn't seem as bright as we remembered.

After walking all over the monaster we walked up the main street in town, going a little further than we had the year before. I finally took a picture of a mural on the side of a building, it was quite pretty.

We also took a team photo with a bust of Lenin, something I don't think we did during our first visit to Sergiev Posad. Come to think of it, I don't think we even noticed the bust of Lenin at all during our first visit.

In keeping with copying our first visit, we went back to the same cafe. I was keen to have more of the best fruit tea I've ever had, and we were hungry. I ended up ordering way too much food, but I don't regret it.

After eating and drinking we kept walking, heading to a new part of town. I'd spied another church spire, it made me curious. The church ended up being more picturesque inside than outside, (though not well lit, and quite dusty,) I'm always going to want to check out a church when I see one.

We went back to the train station and didn't have to wait long for the next train back to Moscow. Now that I've seen Sergiev Posad twice, in two different types of weather, I doubt I'll return.

russia: yaroslavl

We chose to visit Yaroslavl for two reasons: one, because it was in the guidebook, and two, because it was one of the city names on the mugs in Starbucks.

Yaroslavl is a city of almost 600,000 people, around 250 kilometers northeast of Moscow. It is considered one of the Golden Ring cities around Moscow, because it used to be important politically, and was an influence in the early history of modern Russia.

Yaroslavl was officially founded in 1010, though there were Viking settlements in the area in the 700s and 800s. (The Vikings were a lot more spread out than most people know.)

It was founded as another city in the principality of Rostov Veliky, and became the capital of its own principality in the 13^th century. In the mid 15^th century it became part of the Grand Duchy of Moscow, and until at least the 17^th century was Russia's second largest city. It was even the unofficial capital of the country for a while.

I'd argue that most people outside of Russia have never heard of Yaroslavl, unless they've studied Russian history. It no longer has any political influence on the country, and is now an industrial city. The city center, the historical area of the city has UNESCO designation, securing its cultural importance in history.

Yaroslavl was named for its founder, Prince Yaroslav. He was one of the princes who founded Kyiv Rus, which is basically the modern empire of Russia.

We took an early morning train on Saturday, it took about 4 hours. From the train station we caught a local bus to get to our accomodation. It was an apartment in a random block of flats, with interesting decor. It was definitely the first time I've seen a theme of England as decoration throughout an entire flat!

After hanging out for a bit, we walked out to explore the city. It was colder than we'd been expecting, and windy. It's not as much fun to explore a new city when you're cold. Each time I pulled out my camera and/or tripod my fingers got really cold, and took a while to warm up. Metal pieces just hold cold, and that cold goes right into fingers.

We saw a monastery and decided to enter the church. This was one of the churches that is more demanding about women wearing skirts. All three of us were wearing pants, but I was the only one asked to put on a skirt. My coat was a ski jacket, I guess it didn't cover enough of me; the coats Angela and Claire were wearing were somewhat longer.

Another ten minutes of walking brought us to the kremlin of the city. (A reminder, the word kremlin simple means fortress. The Kremlin is in Moscow, but many Russian cities have a kremlin.) The walls were painted white, and from the direction we approached it wasn't immediately obvious where the main gate was located.

We found the ticket booth, and discovered several options for tickets, I hate that. I'd much prefer two ticket options for a place like a kremlin: entry to all museums and the grounds, or just entry to the grounds. We ended up choosing to pay the grounds entry fee, as well as the entrance to the museum of treasure and shiny things.

To be honest, there wasn't a whole lot to see in the grounds of this particular kremlin. The churches weren't open, at least not that we could see, which was a shame. There were several souvenir shops, we stepped into all of them for at least a quick glance, and a minute to warm up.

We enjoyed our walk through the museum of shiny things, though the docents seemed to think we were idiots. We are foreigners, not idiots. Sigh. The displays were pretty good, all three of us enjoyed the shiny things :)

By the time we left the museum it was dusk. In terms of taking photos I hate this time of day on a cloudy day. Taking photos at this time of day has everything turning out blue. Ugh. We stepped inside the ticket office again (which was also a souvenir shop,) so I could look up ideas for places to eat dinner.

We chose a Georgian restaurant which ended up being really good. We were still cold when we finished eating, so we took a bus back to our flat instead of walking. 

The bus stop was a block away from where we needed to be, and there was a supermarket on the way between the two, yay.

The next day we packed up and put the key into the postbox for the owner. This day was sunny, but not any warmer. Even though it wasn't actually warmer, it felt warmer, at least in our minds. It was windier though, which was very noticeable.

We walked in a slightly different direction this time, heading straight toward the Volga river, one of the main rivers in the entire country. The city has developed a nice walkway parallel to the river, with a nice view of the water the whole way.

Walking next to the river made it feel even windier. Despite the sun we were just plain cold. We stopped to check out a couple churches, only one of them was open. I wonder if the sight of onion domes will ever cease being interesting to me.

Yaroslavl is said to have one of the largest number of churches in the Golden Ring cities. After our visit, we didn't doubt this statistic. They really did seem to be every block or two. Some of them had land around them, others were just a church. Maybe seeing so many churches in one area blurred them all in my head, but the churches of Yaroslavl all seemed somewhat similar in appearance to us. There were a lot of white churches with green onion domes.

We eventually made our way to a big platz in the city center. On one side of the platz was a lovely church, on the other side was a giant government building. Normally this is where I would've expected to see a Lenin statue, but we didn't see him.

We tried to find an open door to the church, but it didn't happen. Instead we had to settle for looking at the decorative tiling on the outside of the church.

At that point we realized we were absolutely frozen, at the point where it actually hurts. We found a nearby cafe just so we could warm up. It's not fun when your fingers ache from cold. After an hour inside, we hoped stepping back outside would be acceptable again to our fingers.

We saw a couple war memorials, one of which was quite close to another ginormous church. What stuck with me about this church was the beautiful decorative tiling around the main entrance door.

Another sight mentioned on a travel app was yet another church. The church itself wasn't particularly spectacular, but it was the church on one side of the 1000 ruble banknote, so that meant it was worth seeing. We took a local bus to get there, then walked a little more.

This was another church that wasn't open, argh. It wasn't big, and completely forgettable from the outside, so all three of us wondered why it had been chosen to be put on a banknote. Oh well.

We were happy to get back on the bus going back to the city center, as the heat was on high and felt so good.

We went back to the same restaurant for dinner, as we'd enjoyed ourselves the night before. As we moved away from the river, we felt the effects of the wind weaken, so we decided to walk back to the train station. The walk was broken into two parts when we stopped into a Starbucks for drinks and snacks. Since Starbucks was part of the influence in choosing this travel destination, why not?

Our train arrived back in Moscow just short of midnight, we were all able to take the metro back to our flats. 

I don't know if I'll return to Yaroslavl. Maybe if I'm in the mood for an easy trip, in a different season?