russia: moscow knick knacks

After the two trips of Murmansk and St Petersburg, we decided to stay in Moscow for the last full weekend for the ladies in Moscow. All three of us had a hard time believing the year was already over, as time had flown by. (Weekends had flown by, the workdays in between not so much.) This year was full of fantastic traveling around Russia, I'm so glad we did all of it.

We started our weekend by going back to the Ritz-Carlton for high tea. The tea itself wasn't nearly as good as we remembered from October, but the cakes and other food were yummy. I don't think I'll want to go back by myself next year. 

On the way back to Claire's flat, (where we were all now staying,) we stopped at three different supermarkets to make sure we had enough food and snacks for the next week and some.

After relaxing for a little while, all three of us got gussied up and went to a performance at the Bolshoi Theatre. This is one of the iconic activities of being in Russia, I can't believe it took us so long to do it. When the Bolshoi has a performance of the Nutcracker on New Year's Eve, it is THE thing to do that evening, and tickets sell out within minutes of going on sale.

We had wanted to go all year long, but finding a performance where we could buy tickets online, and had affordable tickets still available, and working around all our weekend trips made it more difficult to sort out. We went to see a performance of the opera Don Quixote.

The girls didn't read the synopsis ahead of time, so they were pretty clueless during much of the performance. The opera is sung in French, which doesn't mean much. Even if you speak/understand the language in which an opera is sung, you're not likely to hear the lyrics clearly enough to sort out what is happening. As with many operas, this one had supertitles, but they were in Russian, which didn't help the three of us at all.

The Bolshoi Theatre is one of the grand, classical theatres of Europe. Very plush, very gold, great ceiling. We were glad we went, though all three of us had sore feet from wearing somewhat fancy shoes, something we're not used to doing, at all.

The next day, Sunday, we attempted to go to one of the many museum estates around Moscow, this one called Kuskovo. I thought I had it sorted out as to how to get there, but I didn't get it right. The train we were on didn't stop at the stop I was expecting, so we got off at the next stop.

Unfortunately, we had a hard time figuring out where to go from the next stop, so we changed our minds and just walked around that random area of a suburb of Moscow. It wasn't particularly memorable, that's for sure, but the weather was good so we didn't mind.

At that point Claire had finished her school year, and since she wasn't coming back for the next school year, she didn't have to go to any of the end of year meetings. Angela had finished her school year a full two weeks earlier, and wasn't coming back, so she didn't have meetings either.

I had one more week of school, so the girls took the week to go to Volgograd for 3 days. They got to see the world's largest Lenin statue, I have to admit I was jealous. This was graduation week for school, so it was a week of concerts and such. Fun to watch my kids, and realize how much they'd progressed over the course of the year.

On Wednesday afternoon, I took the metro out to Aviamotornaya station, and walked from there to a specific building. I'm not sure why I wanted to see it, but I did.

Gosplan Garage was listed on a russiabeyond post of random buildings to see around Moscow. I don't remember the history of the building at all, but it stuck with me as an art deco car garage. I guess that's a bit strange sounding, but hey, most of what I see is a bit on the strange side.

Along the way to the garage I walked past a small park with a WW2 memorial. Even though I've seen more than my fair share of these by traveling around Russia, I'll never stop taking a few moments to honour those who gave everything. Never forget.