Come Along Journey: #4 Moscow (continued)
- craintravel
- Apr 8, 2020
- 3 min read
In the fourth installment of our Come Along Journeys, we will continue our journey in Russia. And we will continue to try to evoke at least some of the feelings of traveling to a new place! I am going to try writing in first person plural (i.e. we and us) , in order to hopefully help you envision yourself actually there, but allow for me to be there as well. Feel free to let me know whether you prefer the first person plural or the second person construction. I have based the narrative on my experiences, but for the sake of flow some events may be combined or altered slightly.
To read the first part of our journey in Russia, click here
After a restful night's sleep at the Radisson Royal (former the Hotel Ukraina), we set out into the city see more of the city. There are so many options of things to see today. The Tretyakov Gallery, the Christ the Savior Cathedral, the Pushkin Museum, Kolomenskoye, inside the Kremlin, Novodevichy Convent, the Cosmonaut Museum, the Exhibition Center (VDNKh), Gorkiy Park and a million other places to see. Today, we decide to try to squeeze in Kolomenskoye, Novodevichy Convent and Christ the Savior Cathedral.
We head to Kievskaya metro station, and get onto the Circle (Brown) line towards Paveletskaya, where we have to transfer to the Green line. On the Green line, we head South a few stops to the conveniently named metro station Kolomenskaya. From there we head east towards the estate. We walk though the Spasskiye Vorota, and the cottage of Peter I. We see people riding in a carriage and then we come to the Church of the Lord's Ascension (Tserkov Vozneseniya Gospoda).
The church on the grounds is on hill that overlooks the Moscow River and another part of Moscow.
As we walk closer to the church, you notice the cool paintings on the outside of the church.
As wander around the estate for another hour or two before heading back to the metro station. Along the way, we come across this sign, which we think is pretty cool.
We get back on the metro, head north on the green line, back to Paveletskaya and then clockwise on the circle line to Park Kultury and then south on the red line to Sportivnaya. We head west to the Novodevichy Convent and Cemetery.
The cemetery at Novodevichy is interesting, as it has a lot of larger headstones and gardens and such. It is just outside of the walls of the convent.
After Novodevichy, we decide to hop back on the metro to Kropotkinskaya, where we exit to see Christ the Savior Cathedral.
The cathedral was originally built in the 19th century, but was torn down by Stalin during his leadership. A huge Soviet government building was supposed to be built on the site. The building was meant to have an extremely large statue of Lenin on it. Construction started on the building, but due to World War II, construction was halted. Eventually a very large pool was established on the site. They apparently kept finding dead bodies in the water. They think that the mafia may have used it as a dumping place for corpses. Reconstruction of the cathedral started in the 1990s and the completed building was consecrated in 2000.
After some time at the cathedral, we walked the nearby bridge with a good view of the nearby Kremlin.
We decide to head back to the hotel after this, so we can be prepared for the next couple days.
Stay tuned on Friday for a trip to Velikiy Novgorod and then onto St Petersburg.
*I thought that it might be good to add some end notes to this post. I have actually spent about sixteen living in Moscow about 26 years ago. It is a fascinating place with a lot of other interesting sites, besides the ones mentioned in these posts. Contrary to what I imply in these Russia related posts, I do actually know a bit of Russian, but I wanted to have people experience Russia as if they didn't know much Russian, because that will be the experience of most Westerners that go to Russia. I have been back a couple of times as a tourist and it was very different to see it in that light. Most of these pictures, from this post and the other Moscow related post are from seven years ago. As I mentioned in the introduction, I have combined experiences, so you may realize that some of these pictures were not taken on the same day. It would be possible to do all of these things in one day, but it would probably be exhausting.
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