russia: moscow: manezhnaya square and zaryadye park

Another episode of touring Tuesday in the dark. I left school as dark was falling (which is still entirely too early at this time of year.)

I walked toward the most famous part of the city: the Kremlin, Alexandrovsky park, Manezhnaya Square and Red Squre.

I'd seen photos on social media of the holiday decorations, and I knew they were all still on display.

I'm not sure, but it seems to me that there were more lights and decorations this season than in the past two years I've lived in Moscow.

Manezhnaya Square is often forgotten when talking about the most famous parts of Moscow, but I think most visitors wander through the area at some point, even if they don't recognize it.

There are a couple archways of lights, as well as an entire thematic display with small houses and cartoon like animals, all in a winter setting. Really cute.

Wikipedia tells me the square is locally known as the Manezhka. I've never heard that name, but I don't think I've ever talked to anyone about that area in particular. 

Or maybe the name has been said and I don't remember. I walked through Red Square next, the holiday festival there is still going strong.

I'd seen photos on social media of my next destination as well, Zaryadye Park. The decorations here were definitely over the top.

Zaryadye Park was the first new park in Moscow in 50 years, it was officially opened in September of 2017. It is across the street from one side of the Kremlin, and Red Square.

The entire park is covered in holiday lights, most of them sticking to a similar look.

If I had to describe the lights, I'd call them one half of a Q-tip, with the tip changing colour regularly. The colour change was mostly in unison, so a full hillside looks pretty cool.

On the far side of the park were holographic lights, with the 'pictures' changing regularly. Awesome.

russia: moscow with a visitor

I like having visitors, particularly those who are already independent travelers in their own right. This is important because visitors need to be able to entertain themselves during the day while I'm at work.

Sometime in early summer my friend Rachel messaged me asking about potentially coming to Russia. She'd found dates with cheap flights, and was keen to come. I was thrilled, as Rachel has lived in numerous countries as well, as well as having done lots of other international traveler.

It wasn't hard to get the paperwork she needed for her visa, and we got the dates set, and life was good. Rachel's flight arrived Monday evening, it was easy for me to meet her at the airport after school finished for the day.

The next morning Rachel slept in a bit while I worked, then met met at lunch. We had lunch with a couple other teachers, everyone got along well. After lunch we walked to Red Square. I've been there plenty of times, but I'm always willing to go back.

Every visitor to Moscow should see Red Square, it's one of the iconic spots in the city. It seems to me that many international media broadcasts about Russia are done from in or near Red Square. The photos of St Basil's cathedral at one end are well known, everyone takes one.

We also checked out GUM, the state department store on one side of the square. The mall is always decorated for the season or holiday, I like seeing what the current decorations look like.

After GUM we walked to Zaryadye Park, one of the newest parks in the city. Fun to wander around, partly to people watch and partly just to walk. Much of the park is carefully landscaped, and there are regular decorations put in, so it's always interesting to see.

After leaving the park we walked toward Christ the Saviour Cathedral, which is big and has gold domes on top. It's a fairly new church, though there is a long religious history in the actual location. I don't know why, but the doors were locked when we got there, argh. Oh well.

The next day Rachel did a bike tour around the city while I worked all day. Thursday night we had drinks at a bar near work, then went to a diner for dinner. Yum.

That weekend we took the train up to St Petersburg, arriving back in Moscow Monday morning. Dinner Monday night was at Cafe Soup. This place does have 'real' food on the menu, but the focus is the 44 different types of soup. They even have the option of a 'soup flight' like you can get a beer flight at a brewery.

I'm happy to admit I liked my dessert soup even more than my main course soup, which was already pretty good.Tuesday I did my normal teaching in the morning, then met Rachel again for lunch. We went to an Asian restaurant I like, enjoying huge bowls of pho.

From there we hopped back on the metro, going out to Izmailovo. I've been there enough times that I'm not a huge fan anymore, but I do think it's a neat place for visitors to explore. Izmailovo has a great market for souvenirs, though since the weather wasn't great while we were there, and it was low season, there weren't as many vendors as usual.

Far better than the market area is the park, which is basically across the road. (Thought you have to go a long way around to get into the property.) It was still raining, but I Rachel was okay with walking in the rain if I was, and I didn't want to hold her back on her last day in Russia.

We walked around the island in the middle of Izmailovo park, and ended up with a decent sunset looking back over Izmailovo market.

From there we went to another great dinner at a place called Lepim i Varim. Rachel loves researching places to eat when she travels, while I don't give it as much thought. Since the soup place had been so awesome I had no trouble following her to what she'd picked out for this last dinner.

Lepim i Varim specializes in pelmeni, basically Russian dumplings. I'm not a huge fan, because most of those I've had in Russia have been from a place where the smell is always slightly off. Going to this restaurant totally changed my mind.

Both of us ordered two main course bowls of pelmeni, and a dessert bowl of pelmeni. YUM. (And Instagram worthy, hee hee.)

The next morning I was sad to put Rachel in a taxi to the airport. Since her visa is good for three years, I hope to see her again in Russia before I move out of the country.

russia: ryazan, and an ice cave in moscow

One of the 'perks' of working at my school is continuing training. Each year we have a specific day for a three hour training, and it is required that all the teachers from all three branches of the school attend. In order to make it possible for everyone to be there, the training is usually on a Sunday afternoon, as that is the only time no one is teaching. You can't have it during the week because evening classes go until 1915, and no one will stay for three hours if you don't start until 1930. You can't have it on Saturday, because the school has Saturday classes. I'm pretty sure it's obvious that none of us are thrilled to have to show up on a Sunday afternoon, but we do.

Since the training meant Claire, Angela, and I only had Saturday as an exploration day, we chose to do a day trip. I'm not sure how it came up, but Ryazan was our destination of the day.

Ryazan is about 125 miles southeast of Moscow, with half a million people living there. Like so many other Russian cities, Ryazan has a complicated history in regards to it's founding date. The first written mention of the city was in 1095, when it was known as Pereslavl. The kremlin might've been founded as early as 800, the area was attacked by a whole bunch of people during the next few centuries, including the Golden Horde of what is now Mongolia.

The Golden Horde did the most damage to Pereslavl, they completely destroyed it. So much so that the city itself was moved. The old location is now called Staraya Ryazan, and the new location was called Pereslavl-Ryazansky until 1776.

Though Ryazan was bombed by the Germans during WW2, after the war the city developed itself as an industrial, scientific, and military center. Most Americans would recognize the name of a scientist who came from Ryazan, even if they don't know where he came from. Pavlov, the guy who studied slobbering dogs ;)

We took an early morning train to Ryazan, arriving to a cold city under a bright blue sky. 

I was reminded almost immediately that touching anything metal in cold weather is not particularly fun, we ended up stepping into a cafe after only 30 minutes in the city, to warm up and prepare ourselves a bit better. We wanted to figure out specific places to visit while sitting inside instead of fumbling with our phones outside in the cold.

The first place we saw was a WW2 memorial, with an eternal flame. A group of cadets (based on how young they looked, I hope they're not fully fledged active duty military members just yet,) stood on guard. We ended up seeing the end of a changing of the guard, I wonder how often that happens?

Next we visited the family home of Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936,) the scientist who studied slobbering dogs. As we all know, when humans are hear the name of something they like, particularly a food, our saliva glands get active. Pavlov was the guy who figured this out. Obviously that wasn't all he studied, but that's all I knew about ahead of time. Pavlov won a Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1904.

We had to take a tour to visit the home, of course the tour was in Russian. We didn't understand most of the details, but it wasn't hard to figure out what each room was, then take the photos we wanted. Like other house museums around the country, we were only able to look in each room from the doorway, we weren't able to go in.

Fun fact: Pavlov's dad was an Orthodox priest. The family had money, the house was pretty nice. Some of the kids in the family had their own rooms, which was pretty impressive for that time. (He had a lot of siblings, also typical of the time.)

We were also able to take a look around the backyard of the property, which was pretty big. There was a well back there, maybe you could still draw water with a bucket if you wanted to?

We walked through the pedestrian center of the city, lined with cafes and shops. A big statue of Lenin stood here, a city employee was busy shoveling snow as we took our team photo.

Our next sight was a random sculpture in a park. A giant mushroom. I'm not sure why it was there, or what it was supposed to represent (if anything,) but it was cute.

Continuing to walk we passed near the front of the circus, which had a neon orange blow up elephant in front of the building. When in Russia......

It didn't take long to get to the major sight of the city: the kremlin. We arrived at the entry point, which goes under a bright, dark yellow, bell tower. Very eye catching to say the least. I'd have loved to climb the bell tower, but that didn't seem to be an option.

Inside the walls of the kremlin (which did not go all the way around the property,) we found a couple museums, and a couple churches. The church most listed as a place to see was not open to visitors, I'm not sure if it is used at all. 

The other church was open, was a whole lot newer, and wasn't nearly as photogenic.

We chose not to go in any of the museums, as none of them sounded all that interesting. When I look back, we didn't stay in the kremlin all that long, it just wasn't very interesting. Or maybe we were cold, which was definitely on our minds all day long.

After leaving the kremlin we walked to the pedestrian area in the city center. We wanted to warm up again, it was easy to find a cafe in which to do so. After a little while we walked to a restaurant to eat a meal, then walked to the other train station in town to catch a train back to Moscow.

I'm not sure I want to come back to Ryazan itself, but after looking into the history a bit I'm okay with coming back to the area to see the ruins of Old Ryazan.

Since we had to go to training the next afternoon, I convinced the girls to get up early and do something fun before training. Zaryadye Park is the newest park in Moscow, one of the things to see/do in the park is a so-called Ice Cave. I'd heard about it on social media, and booked tickets for as soon as it opened Sunday morning.

We got there on time, and were ready to go at 10. To go inside you have to wear a hard hat, over a hair net. I was frustrated, of course, because none of the photos I'd seen online were with people wearing these things. Argh. In fact, those photos were of people with long, styled hair, wearing flowing dresses, and standing on or touching the ice. It turns out another rule is no touching the ice. Sigh. 

The 'cave' is kept at -5C, which at the time was warmer than it was outside. Since we arrived before anyone else, we had it to ourselves for most of our visit. (You buy tickets for a specific time period, about 20 minutes.)

You enter the 'cave' through an airlock, which keeps the temperature steady and cold in the cave. 

I'm not sure if it is always like we saw it, but wasn't all that icy. I don't know how it is made, but it looked as if the 'ice' was just the frost that builds up on air conditioner and refridgerator coils. The floor was a series of black rubber mats, sigh. 

I wonder if the 'ice' builds up over winter? 

Our entry fee was just 200 rubles, so it was fun to do, and cheap. If I have any friends come to visit, and they're keen to see this, I'm willing to go again, just for kicks.