russia: instagram museum, kaluga, and the state history museum in Moscow

We knew we were 'only' doing a day trip on Saturday, and we had one more 'museum' left on our tickets, so we used Friday evening to check off the last museum. Our choice this time was called the upside down house. Each room was arranged as if it was a room in a house, i.e. kitchen, bedroom, bathroom. We had fun taking goofy photos, though all of us had a hard time 'seeing' how a photo would turn out. The decoration of each room wasn't always accurate, in that the 'ceilings' were wood laminate, so an upside down photo didn't look right no matter what we did. Oh well, it was fun anywho.

We went to Kaluga the next morning simply because we met a chick in a cafe who was originally from Kaluga. She didn't say anything exciting about the town, but we're always up for going somewhere new, so when we saw it was two or two and a half hours away by train, we figured why not. A quick look at a travel app told us there was plenty to see in a day.

Kaluga is a city of 325,000, and is the capital city of its own state. It was founded in the 14^th century, and wikipedia tells me the name comes from the old Russian word meaning bog, or quagmire.  
We didn't see any bogs or quagmires, but we weren't out in the areas around the city, so who knows. 
The road on which one goes from Kaluga to Moscow is the one Napoleon wanted to use in 1812 when he was retreating, but Russian troops blocked it so he had to use another road, the one leading to Smolensk. That didn't end up so well either.

In more modern history, Kaluga had a bunch of buildings that were used to house Polish POWs, after they'd been arrested near Vilno. 

Nowadays Kaluga is basically an industrial city, with auto plants, a door and window company, etc... Locals also pride themselves on a guy who grew up here, with the name of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. He was a pioneer in rocket science, which means he had a lot to do with the early space program, and sending the first cosmonaut into space. The Soviet Union (and now Russia,) were and are obsessed with having been winners of the space race back in the day. 

Saturday we got up early, to catch a 0745 train to Kaluga. We arrived at 1022, exactly on time. (Which is typical for the Russian train system.) 

The outside of the train station was grand, but the interior didn't match up at all. Just out in front of the station was a monument with the letters CCCP (in English it would be written USSR,) on top.

After taking that photo we followed the street toward the town center. The street wasn't a major one, but it was still called Lenin street. (Usually Lenin street is much bigger.) Along the way we found a monument to celebrate 50 years of the Komsomol, which was the youth Communist league, back in the day.

We got to Kirov street and saw one of the memorials scattered around town that honour the Great Patriotic War, this one was a policeman with a dog.

Eventually our walk brought us to the first 'sight' of our day, a statue of Lenin. I think he had been elsewhere previously, as pictures I saw had a very different background from what we could see. We took our team photo, and as I was taking down the tripod a man asked if he could take a selfie with us. We said no. Was it because we are women? Or because we're foreigners? Who knows.

Claire saw an ice cream stand, and my watch said it was after noon, so why not? The ice cream was pretty good, and decently priced. The guy doing the scooping didn't understand that each of us wanted two scoops in one cone, each of us got two scoops, separated into two cones.

Next up was a statue of Ivan III. Angela looked him up (we end up learning a bit about Russian history during our trips because we find statues and don't know what these people have done until we look it up,) and we learned he was often called Ivan the Great. He was one of the very first leaders of Russia; while he was in charge the size of Russian land tripled and he defeated the Mongol hords. 

We made it to the park of culture and leisure, finding an I love Kaluga sign right inside the gate. In the center of the park was a giant church, Holy Trinity church. Like every other Orthodox church in Russia, it was busy on Saturday. Easter was on Sunday, which means Saturday is the day everyone brings food to church to have it blessed by the priest. Fortunately, most of the business was outside the church, not inside.

I was very impressed with the interior of the church. There were frescoes all over, and a giant cupola filled with a giant fresco of Jesus. The iconostasis was gold, the chandelier was gold, and there was a tree of saints on one wall. 

The church had been renovated recently, though the bell tower wasn't quite finished.

We made it to the next sight only to find disappointment. There was a cat museum listed in a travel app, and we found the right address, but it was closed. I don't know if it was closed permanently, or just for the day/weekend, but the door was not open and there was no signage.

A quick stop at a nearby grocery store solved me being thirsty, and from there it wasn't too much further until we got to the biggest sight of town.

The museum of cosmonautics in Kaluga is not the first space museum I've seen in Russia. The entry fee was more than reasonable, only 250 rubles. (And there was no 'foreigner tax!') The museum was great overall, as it was easy to figure out where to go, and there was some English. There were photos and information and models on display. There was also a Lenin head, and one of the capsules that has actually been in space. We saw patches from the many space programs, especially the Apollo missions.

There is a statue of Yuri Gagarin across the street from the museum, but we didn't even take photos of him because he has nothing to do with the city, just with space. We walked about 10 minutes to get to a monument to Tsiolkovsky, in the middle of a small park in the middle of a really big traffic circle. There is a skinny rocket right behind him as part of the monument.

At that point we were all really hungry, so we went to a nearby restaurant. After eating we walked straight down the street (we'd basically circled all the way around to the other end of Kirov street,) all the way to Victory Square.

Victory Square was actually a circle. In the middle, rising really tall out of a circular fountain was the Victory Statue; just in front of all this was a guy on a horse monument: General Zhukov in this case. Nearby we found another of the Great Patriotic war monuments: a veteran sitting on a bench.

From there we walked back to Lenin street, and caught a bus back to the train station. We were thirsty, so we went to a nearby grocery store, after which I checked our return tickets to make sure we were at the right place.

Unfortunately, we weren't at the right place. We'd arrived in town at Kaluga 1 train station, but we were scheduled to depart out of Kaluga 2 train station. Whoops. 

We called a taxi, and it got us to the other train station, which was on the other side of town, a bit out of town.

We arrived with minutes to spare, hopped on the train when it arrived, and made it back to Moscow as scheduled. (Note to self, double check arrival and departure stations where there are more than one station in town!)

The next day we all slept in, we didn't meet until after noon. We finally managed to visit the State History Museum in Moscow. It is a very fancy building, located on Red Square. Each time we tried to visit it previously, there had been a really long queue, as we kept choosing days when the entry was free.

We got to the ticket counter and found out that foreigners had a different entry fee from locals, and the foreigner fee depended on the time of year!! We pulled out our passports and showed that we had work visas, and should therefore be considered locals. It worked, and we only had to pay 400 rubles.

We walked into the entry hall and were stunned. The entire hall is painted, the whole thing is really impressive. There are saints all over the ceiling, and there are tall columns, also with painting. Absolutely beautiful.

Every room on the first floor of the museum was an exhibit all by itelf. Many of them had fancy ceilings, with beautiful paintings. Most of them had intricate tile mosaic patterns on the floors. My neck got a workout, spinning all around in every room.

The exhibits were organized chronologically, and laid out really well. We saw some of the geologic history of the country, as well as items from the first tribes of people that lived here. We saw more and more items as time 'moved' closer to now. Each room had a docent, most of them looked bored out of their minds.

At the end of the first floor we made sure to go into a treasure exhibit, which featured mostly religious items. Very shiny, and displayed really well. 

The ceiling in that particular area was painted as if it was the ceiling of an Orthodox church, perhaps it had been a church at one point. The ceilings in a lot of rooms were pretty incredible, I ended up with a crick in my neck from swiveling my head every which way.

The second floor of exhibits had much plainer rooms, though the exhibits were just as well laid out. This floor was much more recent items, I felt like I understood a lot more.

Toward the beginning of our visit Claire looked up some of the history of the museum. It turns out the building was actually built as a museum, but has also been a chemist store, a church, and a university at times. 

Like I said, the rooms were sometimes exhibits themselves! As we were exiting, we saw one last exhibit: a bit about Lenin. In the middle of the room was one of Lenin's calls, a Rolls Royce. For us it felt as if it was just another example of Lenin not being at all the person he called on all Russians to be. He was one of the original bourgeoisie.

After exiting the museum we all agreed that we'd loved it, and it was well worth seeing. Anyone who complains about that museum clearly hates museums in general. We also agreed that we were museumed out, and probably wouldn't return.

From there we walked to dinner, then went home.

Another amazing weekend :)

russia: moscow and borodino

In a prior post I'm pretty sure I've mentioned some of the 'Instagram' museums we visited. We had one more visit left on our ticket, so we chose to go on Friday night. One of the options was for throwing plates, which sounded like a great stress reliever.

The ticket to this museum allows you to throw three plates at a wall and watch them break. There is a marker available, if you want to label your plates with a particular stress, but we skipped that. Throwing plates just feels good!

If it had been allowed, we each could've thrown stacks and stacks of plates. It was fun and just felt good.

Afterward we had dinner at the diner down the road.

The next morning all three of us had to be up pretty early to catch an elektrichka at 0715. Catching a train that early means getting there around 0650 to buy tickets and find the train. Doing that means leaving my flat around 0630, which means waking up at 0600, on a Saturday. Sigh. Fortunately I almost always think a day trip is worth waking up early.

The train was a bit over 2 hours, arriving at 0930. The train station in Borodino was quite small, with a low ceiling. 

The outside of the station looked far better than the inside, as it memorialized what happened in Borodino in 1812.

The battle of Borodino was fought on 7 September 1812, between Russia and France during the Napoleonic Wars. Wikipedia tells me 250,000 troops were involved, with 70,000 casualties. It was the deadliest day of the Napoleonic Wars, indicating just how bad it was.

The French won this particular battle, but it didn't mean much in the end, as they were unable to hold Moscow for very long.

Visiting this area is best done with your own car/transport, but we didn't have that option. Instead we walked. A LOT. We walked and walked and walked.

Visiting this area means looking at a lot of war memorials. Nearly all of them are very specific, dedicated to specific companies and battalions and such. The specific groups didn't mean much to me, but honouring those who fought did.

Some of the memorials are quite close to the road, others sit back further into the fields. Some have paths leading directly to them, others involve walking through the grass.

The very first memorial was just outside the front of the train station. It wasn't very interesting aesthetically, so none of us took a photo of that one. Some of the memorials were more interesting aesthetically, others not so much.

The biggest memorial was to Prince Peter Ivanovich Bagration. He was of Georgian origin, and died on the battlefield of Borodino, as a general.

We also visited a convent in the area, called Spaso Borodinsky monastery/convent. It was founded in 1839, by the Maria Tuchkova, the widow of one of the men who had died during the battle of Borodino. 

She raised funds, getting some financial help from the widow of Emperor Paul.

Work on the first church began in 1818, after she bought the land. The Saviour Miraculous Image church was finished in 1820. Other life circumstances for Mrs. Tuchkova brought her to living in a cottage on the field, and founding a religious community, being joined by other war widows.

In 1838 she became a nun, in 1839 she founded the convent, later becoming Mother Superior. The state closed the convent during Soviet times, but it was returned to the church in 1992, after the fall of the Soviet Union.

There are several churches in the complex, though I couldn't tell you the names of any of them. We only went inside one of them, it was nice. They were careful to make sure we covered our heads and added wraparound skirts over our pants.

A couple of the buildings on the property are now museums, but we didn't visit them. It was enough to step inside the church and honour the reasons it was built for a few minutes.

Not long after leaving the convent we realized we needed to walk pretty fast in order to get back to the train station in time to catch the train we wanted. There is nothing like speedwalking that far, whoops! Thankfully we did catch the train, each of us went to her own flat when we got back to Moscow.

Sunday morning all three of us met up again, a bit later this time :)

Our original plan was to visit the state history museum, on Red Square. When we got there we found really long queues, so we figured it must be free museum weekend again. 

We would've loved to see the museum for free, but had zero desire to share the space with that many people. Sigh. This was the 3^rd or 4^th time we'd tried to see the museum, foiled again!

Instead we walked through GUM, the state department store on another side of Red Square. We opted to do something else very traditional, that is to get ice cream in this mall. Not amazing, not awful.

From there we walked all the way to another mall, this one much more modern. It was a two hour walk, but the weather was quite nice, so we didn't mind.

Afimall is in the area known as Moscow City, the main business district of Moscow. When we got there we met up with our friend Rayne, who wanted to visit a coffee festival.

I'm not sure why we decided to go to the fest, since none of us (except Rayne,) drink coffee, but it was fun to meet up with her. I love the smell and atmosphere of coffee, just not the taste. Somehow there were competitions at the festival, I'm not sure what there is to compete for in coffee, but it happens.

Since we didn't consume anything at the coffee festival we walked to another metro station, then went to our third mall of the day. The top floor of this mall had a food court, one of the restaurants had Asian food. Yum.

And that is the story of our weekend :)

russia: moscow: house on spider legs

Walkabout Wednesday was a bit more quirky this time around.

I recently started following Yandex Maps on Instagram, and one of the first posts I saw was about an apartment building.

The building apparently has the nickname of House on Spider legs, due to the way the building sits on cement 'legs.'

The rest of the apartment building falls more into a brutalist scheme of things, at least it does in my head.

I made an afternoon of sightseeing by walking all the way to the building, the walk was more than an hour.

Just about anything can be photogenic during an afternoon walk.

russia: vyborg, st petersburg, and peterhof

Claire found the focus of our next weekend trip: a city called Vyborg, way up near the border with Finland, not too far from St Petersburg. I don't remember where she learned about it, but I'm glad she said she wanted to go.

I know I've written it before, but the cities along the western border of Russia have a lot of fighting in their histories. All of them have been part of more than one empire/country during their pasts, I like learning the different names they've had because of the different languges of their rulers. The different rulers of Vyborg include variations of what is now Russia, Sweden, and Finland. 

The Swedes were there first, then there was a lot of back and forth between Finland and Russia, with Russia winning out.

Vyborg is 38 kilometers south of Finland and 130 kilometers northwest of St Petersburg, with a population of about 80,000 people. Legends say there was habitation here as early as the 11^th or 12^th centuries, but there is no proof. There is proof of people being here in the 13^th century, so that's the accepted date.

The reason the city exists now is because of Vyborg Castle, which was built at the end of the 13^th century. 

The town was originally on the island along with the castle, but was eventually moved because there wasn't enough room on the island.

Wikipedia tells me the city produces paper, has a facility for the exchange of electricity between Russia and Finland, and the Nord Stream offshore pipeline starts at Vyborg.

We chose to fly to St Petersburg, then spend the rest of the night in the airport, as it was cheaper than taking the train. I'm not sure how I feel about us making that decision because it wasn't better environmentally, buuuut.... We spent most of the time in Starbucks, dozing on and off and chatting.

Around 0530 we got a taxi to Finlandskiy Train Station, where it was easy to buy the next tickets toward Vyborg. A 2.5 hour ride and we were there. The train station in Vyborg is small, but grand. Even better was the city sign on the other side of the parkplatz out front.

It was easy to walk toward the city center, with a couple things to see along the way. One was a sculpture of an octopus, the other was an abandoned ship. Maybe a Viking ship? I don't know what kind of ship it was, but I do know it was abandoned. The view across the water from the abandoned ship gave a hint at the castle we wanted to see.

Instead of heading straight for the castle, we chose to walk through another section of town. This brought us to Red Square with a Lenin statue in the middle of an otherwise wide open square. We also strolled through a park with a statue of a moose. Since Angela is from Canada she said the moose made her feel like she was home, hee hee. Near one end of the park was a tree that had been carved with indigenous designs on one side, and a face on the other. Beautiful. I admire people who can create such beauty. I do not have that talent. 

We found the stelae designating Vyborg as a city of military glory. Considering how much fighting has taken place in and around the city, that's not at all surprising.

More walking brought us to the area that has sections of the old city walls. We got on top of that area, but it wasn't impressive. Instead of sticking out, the area near the walls has been filled in with dirt, so a walkway has been created; along the pavement were a bunch of statues. The lineup was nice, but I kept thinking it looked out of place. The statues should've been inside, or in a park. 

After coming back down from the wall section, we kept going until we saw a church, the Transfiguration Cathedral. The outside was yellow, not very interesting. The inside was beautiful, with a lot of colour. As we were leaving we realized a baptism ceremony was starting, so we stayed as quiet as possible.

Nearby was the Lutheran Sts Peter and Paul. The 'moody' gray sky and ruins out front made the exterior photo of this church far better than anything I took inside.

At that point we were a bit cold, and a little hungry. (Maybe it was just me who was hungry.)

We found a small cafe where the girls had coffee and I ordered 'grilled' vegetables, I'm sure the waitstaff thought I was crazy. (Who doesn't?)

We headed in the general direction of the castle, passing the city market on the way. We didn't need anything, so all we did was a quick walkthrough.

One of my apps said a clock tower was a sight, but when we saw the tower we were less than impressed. Part of it is under renovation, and the bottom is covered with scaffolding and rubbish. It was in a small courtyard, so there was no good viewpoint.

What was more impressive was City Hall. The building was nice, and there was a statue of Torgills Knutson in front. Maybe he was the founder of the city? City Hall was on one side of a small platz, the bridge to the castle was on the other side. The edge of the bridge provided a great viewpoint to take a photo of the castle with a perfect reflection in the water. That was by far the best part of the entire castle visit.

As we got close to the ticket desk we got to see all the scaffolding around the castle up close. Not at all pretty, I hope it all finishes soon. When we got to the ticket desk we discovered the all too common practice of charging foreigners more for entry. This time it was double the price for Russians: 700 rubles versus 350.

We insisted on paying the local price, using our work visas as proof that we live here. It definitely wasn't worth 700 rubles. The museum inside was three floors, with each section focusing on different aspects of the history of Vyborg. 

There was the flora and fauna section, the Finnish section, etc... The section about life when Viipuri was Finnish was my favourite area, especially because there were quite a few photos.

After leaving the castle we kept going over the bridge, to the other side of the water. There was a statue of Peter the 1^st over there, as well as another set of old city walls. These were far more photogenic than the first walls we had seen.

At that point we decided we were done with Vyborg. It wasn't getting any warmer, and we got lucky with train timing when we got to the station. After arriving back in St Petersburg we went straight to Namaste (our favourite restaurant in the city, an Indian place,) for dinner.

The next morning we slept in, as we always seem to do on the Sundays of weekend trips. Eventually we packed up and checked out, I'm ashamed to admit we ate breakfast at Starbucks. We got on the metro, exiting at a station called Moskovskaya. I was hoping to see the 'main' Lenin statue of the city, and take a team photo, but that did not happen. Instead we discovered a construction fence surrounding the entire platz, argh. If we read the sign correctly, it wasn't going to be finished for at least 6 months. Sigh.

Since Angela still hadn't spent much time in St Petersburg, Claire and I decided she should see Chesme Church. 

It isn't big, and the interior is boring, but the outside is nifty. Pink and white stripes. It was easy walk from the Lenin statue, and for the first time Claire and I noticed the cemetery behind the church. Since the church is dedicated to a military victory, and most of the graves were copies of each other, I'm pretty sure the dead and buried were from the battle. Or military at the very least.

That ended up being the end of our city touring. We discovered it would be the same price and heaps faster to take a taxi out to Peterhof, than to make our way to the train station and take an elektrichka. Yay for taxi apps. Well, sortof. 

The driver wanted us to cancel the ride, then pay him the same price in cash. I said no.

Claire and I had seen the gardens of Peterhof during an earlier visit, but we hadn't seen inside the palace itself. Angela was pretty stunned when we walked into the gardens, she said they were the kind of thing you imagine when you think of royal gardens. The take your breath away kind of beauty. Yay!

Entrance into the palace was more than double for foreigners than for Russians. ARGH. 1000 rubles versus 450 rubles. We showed our work visas, but the ticket lady said we also needed a document showing we were properly paying our taxes to get the lower price. ARGH.

There are signs all over saying it is okay to take photos and videos, but to turn off your flash. When we got to the first staircase it was super impressive and I asked Angela to take a photo of me because there was no one else around.

About 3 seconds after she took the photo a docent came running and started yelling at me, saying no photos allowed. I was completely confused, as all the signs had said photos were okay. She said something about photos not being allowed in areas where traffic flow was restricted, meaning small rooms and stairwells. Since there was no one else in sight I didn't understand, especially since there was plenty of room for plenty of people to go around me if those imaginary people all came rushing at once. The lady threatened to call security, I said go ahead. She didn't, we kept going.

Walking through the palace was a workout for my neck. Many of the floors were beautifully patterned in wood, the ceilings were painted and hung with chandeliers, and most of the rooms were very very extravagant. Way too much gold, heaps of mirrors, etc... 

The room I found most fascinating had portraits all over the walls, with very little blank space. It felt as if all those paintings were looking at me.

Somehow we got stuck between a couple tour groups, argh. One docent yelled at us for not moving along more quickly, even though we were not in anyone's way, and not holding up a tour group. We stayed near a couple doorways until a room cleared, then took photos, which somehow was the wrong thing to do? Maybe these people just don't like independent foreigners? We weren't the first people to wait by these doorways to take these photos, so being yelled at when others hadn't been yelled at was really frustrating.

After being totally blinged out in the palace we decided to walk around the gardens a bit. It wasn't summer season yet, so there was no entry fee for the gardens. Pretty, and much less crowded than the last time we'd been there. There is a view of the back side of the palace and main fountain (which wasn't running yet,) which is iconic, I wish I had a camera that could capture it properly.

We also walked to the area where the property borders the water. Gorgeous, as always. There is a lighthouse out there that is quite photogenic, though not extravagant.

Our taxi back into the city took a lot longer, but that was because we wanted to go into the city center. We started dinner with gelatto, which made sure we had plenty of room :) From there we walked to Namaste and ordered food to go.

Next up was a quick metro ride, followed by a bus ride back to the airport. Checkin and the flight were easy, we arrived back to a snowy Moscow.

I will be back to St Petersburg.

russia: ufa

We put Ufa on our travel calendar after seeing it listed as a destination on a departures board at an airport. We thought the name was quirky, and hey, why not?

Ufa is the capital of the Republic of Bashkortostan, (formerly called Bashkiriya,) which is the most populous republic in Russia. I'm not sure what the difference is between a republic and a state in this country, it has something to do with governance, and who has authority, I think. Wikipedia says it is a state with no sovereignty, though that doesn't help me figure it out. 

Bashkortostan is officially bilingual, speaking Bashkir and Russian. Nearly every sign we saw was in both languages, with occasional signs adding English as well. Bashkir is a Turkic language, so it doesn't sound at all like Russian. The modern Bashkir alphabet similar to Cyrillic, though there are some dfferent characters.

Ufa has just over a million official inhabitants, and has been around in one form or another since the 5^th century. It was a medieval city, before the arrival of the Russians, though the official founding date is 1574 when Ivan the Terrible ordered a fort built there. 

That fort was later destroyed, and the city itself doesn't feel like it has much history. In general it feels like a young city, despite what historians say.

Ufa has an economy very dependent on industry and natural resources. Wikipedia mentions oil refining, mechanical engineering, and other fuel and engineering companies. It isn't a beautiful city persay, but things do look nice.

Ufa is a two hour flight from Moscow, and is two time zones ahead of Moscow. This meant our two hour flight that took off from Moscow at 2030 on Friday arrived after midnight in Ufa. 

Since we're cheap, we spent the rest of the night at the airport. Ufa International Airport isn't big, but we were able to find some chairs without armrests on which to try and doze for a while.

After taking photos with city and airport signs in the sun, the next morning we took the bus into the city center, the ride was about 25 kilometers and cost less than a dollar. According to the signs at the bus stop, it runs every 20 minutes or so, which is really convenient. During the ride we spotted several groups of people doing city cleanup type of work. 

Raking dead twigs, chopping up piles of snow that still remain, picking up rubbish, etc... It was impressive to see so many people taking care of their city.

We hopped off somewhere along Lenin Street.

We started our city tour by seeing a statue of Lenin in the middle of a small park. The man was sitting, and there was an obelisk behind him. We kept going along the street, coming to a statue of Fyodor Shalyapin. (There is some debate as to how his name is spelled in English, this is the option I'm using, just because.) 

He was a Russian opera singer in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. After some searching online, we found information telling us that the statue was in Ufa because he spent some of his childhood there. The statue is located on the side of a concert hall now named after him, at which he performed. Across the street was another theatre, no one can accuse Ufa of not having culture.

From there we found a city sign for Ufa. We loved it because it was written in Bashkir, so it looks like three circles. Each circle is crossed by a line, horizontal or vertical. 

We also found a city sign with the name written in Russian, so we took photos with both.

Claire and Angela were both exhausted so we stepped into a cafe thinking we'd have a drink to wake up. It didn't work out that way, but after being inside for about an hour we decided to walk toward our booked accomodation.

We got in contact with the potential landlord who didn't seem thrilled to hear from us. It was a challenge for me to understand what he was saying, he didn't slow down even when I specifically asked him to do so. 

It turned out the apartment we'd booked wasn't available, so he sent us an address nowhere close. According to the link he sent, it was also more expensive than what we booked. To make a long story short, we stayed somewhere else.

After checking in, we relaxed for a bit and figured out a plan for the rest of the day.

Our next sight was a giant memorial to the heroes of the October revolution. I'm used to big Soviet memorials, but this one was bigger than normal. There were kids running around this one, totally unaware that anyone else was around.

From there we walked toward a sight listed as permanently closed on Google maps. Google maps was wrong, we were able to go in the Lenin House Museum. It turned out to be the house in which his wife and mother in law lived in while they were in exile in Ufa. Lenin visited twice during 1900, which apparently qualified it for being a museum now. The entry fee was low, we really liked our visit.

Close to the house museum was another city sign, this one also written in Bashkir. It sat on one side of a platz, there wasn't anyone else around. 

I guess everyone else in the city had already had their photo taken with this sign.

We kept going, intending to walk up Kirov street; we got distracted by a small souvenir/press shop. In the shop we found magnets and postcards, something we look for during all of our trips. After looking at all the postcards we decided to head to a place called Congress Hall, which is actually a conference center with modern architecture.

It was easy to get there by bus, and didn't take long. We liked the building, and there is a small park right next to the building that was filled with people. 

At the end of the park is a monument to Salavat (Salawat) Yulaev, a hero of the Bashkir people. He lived during the 18^th century, and was involved politically in a number of events. The monument has him sitting on a horse, which is perched on a hill overlooking the entire region.

At that point we needed a proper meal, so we found a restaurant. Dinner started out well, with a good menu, good prices, etc... Angela and I liked our food, but not all of Claire's food arrived. A manager came out to apologize to Claire a good 10-15 minutes after we'd finished eating, which was a bit late. 

I didn't understand enough of what she was saying to understand the reason, I just understood that Claire's food wasn't coming. Sigh.

After a stop at a grocery store, we walked home, and crashed quickly. Since Claire and Angela hadn't slept much at all at the airport they were more tired than I was, plus they were also fighting colds, making them even more tired.

The next morning we packed up and checked out at 1100, stepping out into a beautiful day.

We ended up stepping into a bakery a couple blocks away, even though we probably should've avoided a place with sugar loaded food. The lady inside was amazed by us, I'm guessing she doesn't see many foreigners. We enjoyed the donuts and other goodies we found there.

Our first sight of the day was a church. It was blue, and looked quite new. It turns out the Cathedral of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary is 100 years old. Apparently the church has received good care over the years, we never would've known it was more than a decade or two old. 

The frescoes were bright, the chandelier and iconostasis gold. We were inside with plenty of people, I loved the atmosphere.

After we left the church we took off some layers, since it was quite warm. Sun and more than 10C is tshirt weather :) We walked up Kirov Street all the way to Mustaya Karima Square. There is a statue of him in the middle of the square, it was surrounded by families out to enjoy the sun. Mustai Karim was a Soviet poet, writer, and playwright in the 20^th century. Over his lifetime he won important prizes like the Lenin Prize, and the State Prize of the USSR.

His monument stands in the middle of the square, the Trade Union building stands on one edge of the square. From the Trade Union building we walked down Karl Marx street. Along the way we stepped into another park, because we liked the gate. Inside the park we found a war memorial that wasn't working. There was no fire in the eternal flame, and park of the obelisk was being fixed.

More walking brought us to the train station. It was ugly, a dark gold colour. From there we caught a trolleybus that took us 12km to Park Pobedy, or Victory Park. 

It was quite a long ride, and only cost 20 rubles!! We got off the bus near a memorial with a sad woman statue. I don't know what it was for, but it looked new.

Next door to the sad woman memorial was Lyalya Tulpan Mosque. It had two minarets, I found information saying it could hold 1000 worshippers. We were happy to go in, the women's sectioon was actually a big balcony on the next floor up. Quiet, fairthful, and beautiful. Everything I love about a house of faith.

Next to the mosque was Park Pobedy. 

We skipped the war museum, as we didn't want to take the time, and didn't figure it would be all that different from other war/military museums we've seen around the country. All around the park were tanks, on which kids climbed everywhere.

At the back of the park was another eternal flame memorial, this one also being repaired. There was fire in this one, though the obelisk was completely covered by scaffolding. We wandered through the rest of the park, but didn't love all the people everywhere. (The downside of good weather.)

We left the park and got back on the trolleybus, going all the way to the end of the route then coming back into the city. This time we got off the bus at another Lenin statue, it was really big. Like everywhere else in the city it was covered in people out enjoying the weather. We took our team photo and left.

We found a different restaurant for dinner, and had a fabulous experience. Great food, good prices, good service, etc... After dinner we took a taxi to the airport where it was easy to check in, and everything else went smoothly. Our flight landed in Moscow a few minutes early, something always appreciated.

We loved Ufa, but feel as though we saw everything. I don't think I have a reason to return, but who knows?