Russia Diary #7: Moscow part II

Our last full day in Moscow was a day of museums. We started the day at the State Historical Building (the red wedding cake-looking building on the other end of Red Square), which displays artifacts of Russian history from pre-historic times up to the end of the Russian Empire. Definitely get the audio guide (for 400RUB extra), because all the displays are in Russian, which I think is stupid, but what can you do? I was particularly taken with all the displays of the development of Russian culture from the 13^th to the 16^th century – after that, it became too European for me (though still interesting.)

State Historical Museum’s front facade

The front hall – the ceiling is painted with a genealogy tree of all the Russian monarchs

Yup, more neck pain

I did enjoy the displays of fashion of the nobilities though

Then, after lunch, it was off to the Kremlin. Here you have the choice of two tickets – one for the Cathedral Square (for 700RUB) and one for the Armory, which houses the treasures of the Russian Empire (for 1000RUB; you have to buy your ticket for a specific time like 10:30, 12, and so on). However, after the State Historical Museum, we decided to forgo the Armory and just checked out the Cathedral Square, which contains five 15^th-century cathedrals built back when the entire city of Moscow was inside the Kremlin (“kremlin” in Russia means “fortress”, so there are many different Kremlins all over the country.)

Look how empty the Square is! You can never get this in the summer!

Church of the Dormition and Ivan the Great Belltower

Cathedral of the Archangel

Cathedral of the Annunciation

The Tsar Cannon

The Tsar Bell – the biggest bell in the world, but sadly it was broken before it could be suspended

The cathedrals are all impressive, though not as splendidly and lavishly decorated as the ones in Saint Petersburg. The ones in Saint Petersburg had all been restored, while these are left more or less untouched (though some are under renovation), so they look less polished but more authentic.

Most of the cathedrals don’t allow photos inside, except for the Cathedral of the Dormition – not sure why

Later, we went to the Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics. It was fun and educational, though I was annoyed with having to pay extra for my camera (taking pictures with your phone is free), and the heat was making us sleepy (the Russians like to keep their buildings super toasty), so after poking about for a bit, we headed back.

Monument to the Conquerors of Space – the museum is located under it

Belka and Strelka, the first two dogs that went into space and returned alive (poor Laika didn’t return so her body wasn’t recovered)

Various satellites

Lunokhod 1

Space food (you can also buy something like this from a vending machine outside the museum)

If it wasn’t so freezing, I would’ve liked to check out the nearby VDNKh Park – a series of buildings intended to display the Soviet’s agricultural, industrial, and technological prowess – but we had one more place to visit, and it was my favorite, the Tretyakov Gallery.

Tretyakov Gallery’s entrance (with a statue of Pavel Tretyakov, the man who started the collection, out front)

This was near our apartment, and it was open late on Friday, which was why we saved it for last. Finally, I was in my element. Not that I wasn’t in my element at the other museums, but this was where I could solely concentrate on the artworks and not get distracted by the interior (like at the Hermitage.)

Some of my favorite works – “The Rider” by Karl Bryullov and “The Unequal Marriage” by Vasili Pukirev

Detail of “Portrait of Princess M.V. Vorontsova” by Sergei Zaryanko – just look at that lace! And that satin!

“Portrait of an Unknown Woman” by Ivan Kramskoi

“Golden Autumn” by Isaac Levitan

“Girl with Peaches” by Valentin Serov

We had half a day left in Moscow, and it was time for some souvenir shopping. Having done my research and with tips from our walking tour guide, we headed to the Izmailovsky Market on the outskirt of Moscow (you can take the Metro there, but remember to get off at Partizanskaya Station, not Izmailovskaya Station. Confusing, I know.)

The Izmailovsky Kremlin, where the market is located

Here you can find the same souvenirs – Russian dolls, fur hats, amber jewelry, etc. – for a fraction of the prices of the shop in the city center. On the weekends, there is also a flea market selling everything from old clothes and toys to books, records, and silverware (I got two beautiful old pewter mugs from one of these sellers.) Bring cash and prepare to bargain – the sellers agreed to our prices so readily that we suspected we could have gone even lower. If we hadn’t run out of cash and time (and luggage space), we would’ve stayed for much longer.

Old Soviet pins

You can also find more than the traditional Russian dolls (see Putin and other Russian leaders up there?)

We absolutely lost it at these dolls – the smallest one is smaller than a pea!

Finally, after a frenzy of packing and 1.5 hours sitting in Moscow traffic (we had a lot of luggage so we had to take a taxi to the airport instead of the much-quicker Aeroexpress train), we were on our way home. Goodbye, Russia. It was a whirlwind of a trip, and I was exhausted – exhausted by all the traveling, by the extremes of weather, and by all the beauty – but left wanting for more. I still haven’t fulfilled my Trans-Siberia dream yet, so I’ll definitely return one day!

And on that note, I’m going to end the post with this video of a musician at the Metro – you don’t get much more Russian than this:

Russia Diary #6: Moscow part I

Saying goodbye to Murmansk, we returned to city life with our last destination – Moscow. Although we were tired after an early morning flight, the sun was shining, so we took advantage of it by walking to Red Square. You don’t know how much you’d miss the sun until you don’t see it for days on end – in Saint Petersburg we only had 6 hours of daylight each day (and it was barely light, as the sky was overcast most days), and in Murmansk even less, while in Moscow we actually had nearly 9 hours of daylight. What luxury!

Anyway, my first impression of Moscow is that it is a livelier and more urban city than Saint Petersburg – as fitting its status as the capital – despite being nearly 600 years older. Also, it feels more Russian than Saint Petersburg, which has more of a European feel. This is probably because Moscow’s architecture is more traditional Russian, especially around Red Square. As it was a bit late to go into the Kremlin, we just strolled around looking at all the colorful buildings and popped into GUM Department Store to warm up and try its delicious ice cream (made with the same recipe since Soviet time!)

Classic view of Red Square, with the Kremlin on one side and St. Basil’s Cathedral on the other

Lenin’s Mausoleum – it’s free, but we didn’t check it out. We have our own mummified leader, thank you very much

GUM’s facade is being taken over by a Winter Festival, which will be up until March (they love their Christmas celebration here)

GUM’s interior and its delicious ice cream – caramel and chocolate are two of the best flavors

A wedding photoshoot outside GUM

Moscow River

The very Russian interior of Varenichnaya No. 1 restaurant

I highly recommend visiting the Red Square at night as well – it got all lit up and was exceedingly pretty.

The next day, we went on another walking tour. Though we’d walked around ourselves the day before, it was still fun to learn more about the city from a local guide. For example, he advised us to lower our expectations for the interior of St. Basil’s Cathedral – because it’s a series of chapels built next to each other, it won’t be the large, grandiose church inside. For that, he recommended the Church of the Savior, which is free to enter (we ended up going to neither, since we’d had our full shares of churches in Saint Petersburg.) We also got to see the Changing of the Guards at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, which was great fun (though I felt sorry for the guards, having to stand there in the cold for an hour each day.)

Two of the many churches of Moscow (near our Airbnb)

St. Cyril and St. Methodius – the ones responsible for the Cyrillic alphabet

Murmansk’s “Hero City” plaque and one of the Kremlin’s towers

The Changing of the Guards (too bad the monument itself is under renovation)

After lunch, it started snowing quite heavily, so we took refuge in the famous Metro stations of Moscow. Armed with a map, we simply traveled around the circle line (which has the most beautiful stations) and stopped at whichever station that caught our eyes. A ticket costs only 40RUB and you can change lines as much as you want (as long as you don’t exit the station), so this may be the best and cheapest thing to do in Moscow.  I was blown away by the level of workmanship and artistry at each station. Each is truly like a mini palace. We didn’t get to see them all, but we did get a good glimpse of them before the rush hours started and we had to head home.

Prospekt Mira station

Novoslobodskaya Station with its stained glass windows is my favorite

Krasnopresenskaya Station

Arbatskaya Station

Kievskaya Station

Ploschad Revolyutsii (Revolution Square, aka Red Square) Station – rubbing the dog and the rooster is supposed to bring you luck

Stay tuned for the last installment!

Russia Diary #5: Murmansk part II

The main focus of our trip to Murmansk, and indeed to Russia, is, of course, the Aurora hunt. Our Airbnb host runs an Aurora hunting tour on the side, so we booked with him for three nights (for $65/person/night, it’s about $20 cheaper than other tour offers we’d seen.) At 9 PM the first night, we, along with a few other guests, got picked up by our host at a meeting point and then driven outside of the city. We were anxious because the forecast wasn’t promising – it’s a low-activity year of the solar cycle, so the KP Index (a scale of 0 – 9 that indicates the likelihood of Aurora) was low.

When the car stopped and the host said, “There’s the Aurora,” we all gawped at the sky and went “Where? Where?” like a bunch of idiots. That was when I learned the truth about the Aurora – most of the time, and especially when the KP Index is low, it’s not as bright as in those photos you see online. To our untrained eyes, it just looked like clouds. By the time I set up my tripod and took a few snaps, the Aurora had moved on. We drove around some more, but it didn’t reappear.

What we saw vs. what the camera saw

We all felt a little anticlimactic, so the host took us to a viewpoint to see the city lights of Murmansk. The lights are pretty, but it was the walk there that stayed with me. Imagine this: walking uphill through the snow, in the dark, when you’re sleepy and disoriented, and suddenly you see a bunch of fighter planes rising out of the snow like a row of eerie sentinels (later, I learned that it’s the Monument to the Soldiers of the 1^st Air Defense Bulk. It looks a lot less ominous during the day.)

But tell me that this doesn’t look like something out of a post-apocalyptic sci-fi horror

The lights of Murmansk

It snowed all day the next day and only stopped around 11 PM, so we didn’t set out until midnight. The sky was beautifully clear and I managed to take some great photos, but it was so cold (-25 degrees Celsius) and the Aurora is nowhere in sight.

The sky was so clear we even saw a moon ring

When the host finally pointed out a smidgen of light in the distance, we were all amazed – how did he even see that?!

And remember, it was much, much fainter in person

Since that didn’t really count as catching the Aurora, the host offered us a discount for the next night – also our last night in Murmansk. This was our last chance. And it didn’t look good. Again, the sky was clear, but as we kept driving around and waiting, driving and waiting, there was no sign of the Aurora. We began to resign ourselves to the fact that maybe luck wasn’t on our side.

The light pillars (light reflected from ice crystals in the air) were cool, but the Aurora would be nicer

However, just as we were settling down to warm up with some tea and fruit pies (which the host supplied every night), the host burst into the car, saying, “It’s starting!” Throwing the tea down, we scrambled outside and there it was – a streak of green in the distance. It still wasn’t as bright as we’d hoped, but there was no mistaking it for clouds this time. I don’t know if it was because our eyes were more used to seeing it or because it was actually brighter. We could actually see it moving around, undulating and shifting like a ribbon in the sky. Our extremities were all freezing, but we must’ve stood around for nearly half an hour, just looking at it.

I didn’t even turn around for the photo because I didn’t want to take my eyes off it!

Some of my photos turned out blurry because the wind was so strong that it rocked my tripod around

Finally, after 3 nights of driving and standing around in the freezing cold, we were rewarded with the beautiful, memorable sight of the Aurora. There’s a reason it’s called a “hunt” and a “chase” – it was tough, but when we got the result, it was all worth it.

Russia Diary #4: Murmansk part I

We went to Murmansk with the sole purpose of hunting for the Aurora, so we didn’t think much about what else to do there. In truth, there isn’t much to do in Murmansk, period. The top two “things to do” in Murmansk, according to Tripadvisor, is to visit a nuclear icebreaker ship, but after I read Midnight in Chernobyl, you can’t pay me enough to go near anything nuclear, and “Alyosha”, a World War II monument which we could kind of see from the window of our Airbnb apartment, so it doesn’t hold much interest for us.

The view from our Airbnb (taken at 10 AM!!!) and a street nearby

The Alyosha Monument under the morning sun

Schoolkids playing hockey just outside our window

Murmansk may not have a ton of tourist attractions, but it does have one thing – snow. A lot of snow. And snow, I find, is a great beautifier. You can take any depressing Soviet bloc city – and Murmansk is certainly not going to win any beauty contest – and bury it in a foot of snow, and it’ll look pretty and pristine and romantic. So we spent a lot of time just walking around and taking photos. When it got too cold, we would simply duck into a coffee shop or go to the mall.

Instead of gilding their interiors, the people of Murmansk appear to combat the weather by painting their houses in bright colors

… and by putting up a lot of Christmas lights

Me goofing off

It was so cold that my breath condensed on my eyelashes!

People skiing at a local park

The one tourist “activity” we did, other than hunting for the Aurora, is to visit a husky farm, Ulybka Alyaski. There are different husky farms around Murmansk, but this is the best one, since the dogs are trained for sled-racing, not for tourists; opening the farm for tourists is just their way of making money for the dogs. The staff is very friendly – we showed up without knowing that you need to pre-book a tour (there are trips of different lengths that you can go on the sleds – 3km, 5km, and 600m), but they fit us in for a short trip anyway.

In the end, we were glad we didn’t go on a longer sledding trip, because we weren’t dressed for it, and a short trip still gave us a taste of what dog sledding is like. Afterward, we had a lot of fun playing with the dogs (not just the sled dogs but also other breeds like the Finnish Lapphund, traditionally used for herding reindeers) and warming up in the cabin with tea and cookies.

Don’t let that pretty face fool you…

He almost killed my mitten!

Yummy cookies inside the cabin

Stay tuned for the next part of our Murmansk adventure – the Aurora hunts!

Russia Diary #3: Saint Petersburg part II

For our third day in Saint Petersburg, we took a day trip to Catherine Palace, aka the Summer Palace, which is located in the small town of Pushkin (also known by its old name, “Tsarskoye Selo”, meaning “The Tsar’s Village”), located about 30km away from Saint Petersburg. We could’ve taken public transport there (you’d need to take the metro, then a bus), but it was cold, so we decided to book a Yandex taxi. Divided between the four of us, the cost of a taxi was not that much higher than public transport and it got us there in half the time.

The drive was unremarkable, just passing through bleak industrial land, but Pushkin itself seems like a pleasant little town. If it hadn’t been so cold, I would’ve loved to walk around there and see more of Russian life outside of the big cities. But as we were freezing, we hurried into the Palace.

The Palace’s front gate (the entrance is in the back though)

Inside, we found the same resplendent and luxurious interior as the Winter Palace – perhaps even more so, because at the Winter Palace, the artworks take the spotlight, whereas here, it’s just gilded carvings and glittering crystals everywhere.

Russia’s answer to Versailles’ Hall of Mirrors

The famous Amber Room (this is a reconstruction, after the original was looted by the German Army during WWII and went missing)

The one thing I don’t like about these palaces, though, is that they don’t give a clear impression of how people used to live back then – as opposed to say, the palaces in France (like Fontainebleau and even Versailles), where the rooms are set up as if they were still in use. Here, some rooms do have furniture and stuff, but the furnishings feel more like decorations than actual things used by actual people. I don’t know, perhaps the decorations are so dazzling that I can’t imagine them being really used.

Like this dining table, for instance

Afterward, we took a stroll around the park. In the summer, you’ll need a separate ticket (costing 150RUB) for the park, but in the winter, since all the outbuildings in the park are closed, entrance is free. Still, there is a certain kind of beauty about it, with all the barren trees clipped to an impressive symmetry and standing out against the snow. Plus, we practically had it to ourselves, which was awesome. There is also Pavlovsk Palace about 7km away, but we were getting tired, so we went home and took the rest of the evening easy.

The symmetry really is ridiculous

The next day, which was our last day in Saint Petersburg, we checked out the inside of all the churches we haven’t managed to see in details during the walking tour – St. Isaac’s Cathedral, Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood, and Kazan Cathedral (Kazan Cathedral is still a working church so no photography is allowed inside.)

If you think that the interiors of the Winter Palace and Catherine’s Palace are resplendent, then these churches are resplendence on steroids. My friends and I soon dubbed the trip “A Pain in the Neck” because we were forever gazing up at ceilings and murals and mosaics. I’m a staunch atheist, but even I felt awed by these churches.

St. Isaac’s

… and the interior

Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood

… and the interior

Afterward, while we were on the colonnade on the roof of St. Isaac’s, the sun came out – the first sun we’d seen in four days! So we spent the rest of the day walking along the Neva River to soak in some vitamin D. There are still tons of sights to see (like Peter & Paul Fortress, the Faberge Museum, and the Kuntskamera, a museum of curiosities), but we’d had enough of gold leaf, so we just walked around until it was time to return to the apartment, pack up, and head to the airport. Like I said, you have to save something for next time, and I hope there will be a next time in Saint Petersburg for me.

View from St. Isaac’s colonnade

The Kunstkamera (center)

Peter & Paul Fortress

Up next is our Northern Lights adventure in Murmansk, so stay tuned!