russia: moscow: random places around the city

Since I'd been traveling every weekend for about a month I decided I needed a weekend in Moscow. It was nice to get a full night of sleep on Friday, I'm not used to that.

I'd made arrangements to meet up with my friend Svetlana near an exit of one of Moscow's metro stations. She has a car, so she drove for the rest of the day, woo hoo! Driving is definitely convenient, though Moscow traffic is annoying most of the time.

Our first stop of the day took about an hour to get to. After going around one traffic circle more than once, we finally pulled up to a church. The Church of the Sign of the Most Holy Mother of God is more than 300 years old! This small church, in a small town outside Moscow is older than my home country, whoa.

This church is built in a completely different style than was normal at the time in Russia. It is baroque, which you can see as soon as you see the church. It is small, with basically just one spire reaching up toward the sky.

As we approached we could see a statue near the base of the church, the poor guy was missing his head. Clearly he was having a rough day.

We went into the church (after I covered my hair with the scarf I always have in my purse, and Svetlana pulled her hood over her head,) and found a service taking place. I really really wanted to take more photos inside, but that wasn't going to happen while the service was taking place.

We were able to move to a spot where I was able to look up into the spire, I loved it. Typically the 'ceiling' of this area is painted with a fresco of something religious. This one was different in that there were no paintings; instead there were statues on the walls of the spire. I loved it.

We didn't stay inside for long, since the church was quite small, and I didn't want to interrupt the service. Walking back outside I opted to circle all the way around the church, just to see it all. We found more statues, one of which had his head, but was missing his arms. Another one was missing a head and an arm.

We went to the top of a nearby small (really small hill,) crossing a bridge with locks of love to get there. It was a nice view of the area, but chilly with the wind blowing. I was wearing a skirt, with chacos, and my toes were definitely feeling the chilly weather.

We followed paths to get down closer to the river. While walking I saw one guy standing out in the middle of the river, fishing. I imagine he was cold too, even though I assume he was wearing waders and whateva else he needed to keep from getting totally soaked. I wonder how long he stayed out there.

Eventually we walked back to the car, and started driving. Svetlana's car has heated seats, which I dearly love. Who needs vented air when your back and backside are heated?

Another hour and some on the road took us to the mid northern side of the city, we parked close to the entrance of Yekaterinsky Park. This is another spot in the city I learned about by seeing a pretty photo on social media.

The photo of the park I'd seen had shown fall trees in all their glory. Let's just say that November is no longer that beautiful time of year in Moscow. Trees are empty, skies are gray, it's a lot closer to yuck.

That being said, it was nice to walk around the (small) park. There were familes and couples out walking around, even though there wasn't really anything to see or do. I assume it is better in late spring, summer, and early fall.

After hopping back in the car we drove about 20 minutes to a cafe I'd first visited earlier this school year, Cafe Soup. Finding parking wasn't easy, as the places on the streets right by the cafe cost nearly $6/hr. We weren't planning to stay in the restaurant all night, but that's still pretty pricey. Fortunately we found cheaper spots a few steets away.

I was thrilled to choose three different soups, the pumpkin option turned out to be the best. While eating I picked up the seasonal menu and noticed they had another pumpkin soup option, as well as pumpkin tea and pumpkin cheesecake. It was too late to have the pumpkin tea, (I'd already made my order,) but I realized I could have cheesecake for dessert.

It was good, and well worth the calories. Side note: the cheesecake was pumpkin flavoured, not pumpkin spice flavoured.

After dinner we drove to another area of the city, Svetlana had gotten us tickets to a recently released movie, Joker. I was excited because it was being shown in the original language (English,) with subtitles.

Joker was....intense, to say the least. I don't know if I liked it or not, I have mixed feelings.

After the movie, I took the subway home. It was a good day. :)

The next day I slept in, then putzed around for a whole bunch of hours. I putzed and putzed and putzed, not getting out of the door to my flat until nearly 1500. Whoops. I can't remember the last time it took me that long to get going.

I took the metro back to the area where I'd met up with Svetlana yesterday. When she first picked me up I noticed a WW2 monument, a small park, and a fortress/monastery looking wall with old towers. I wanted to walk around see what there was in an area of Moscow that is completely new to me.

I took my photo of the war memorial/monument, and part of the park, and kept walking. As I got closer to the wall with towers, I pulled out my phone to check what it was, only to have my phone tell me I was out at one of the Moscow airports. Clearly, the GPS system was a bit wonky.

I could see three towers along one side of the wall, each of the towers was in a slightly different style, and all of them were slowly falling apart. I followed the wall around, and found a church and maybe a monastery?

Each building I could see looked totally different. Even the church itself looked like construction had been directed by three different people at three different times.

The inside of the church wasn't very interesting, I didn't stay inside for long, nor did I even attempt to take any photos.

From there I walked back to the metro, then went home.

A nice relaxing weekend in Moscow :)