last days of Moscow
- Our last couple of days in Moscow before heading out east on the Trans-Siberian proper, we spent the day out in one of the “golden ring” towns called Sergiev Posad. Of course a very complicated train situation to get there but we eventually made it on to one of the suburban, hard benched seated train with hard faced, angry looking men drinking beer. These towns are called golden ring towns I assume based on the fact they all have golden domed churches.
From travels 08 blogphotos This town was (in)famous for its big monastery which indeed had a lot of golden domes. We wandered around the monastery for a bit seeing a lot of babushka’s hanging out and groups lining up to kiss the coffin of a saint and fill their bottles with holy water.
From travels 08 blogphotos 
From travels 08 blogphotos It was nice to be in a church area with a bit of activity going on. I like it when churches are used for people to hang out and spend time in, it wasn’t really touristy at all just loads of people hanging out. The churches were beautiful with blue and gold domes although the insides had been converted to shops. It was a nice sunny day so good place to wander around a bit before we headed back to the train station for the 90 minute ride home.
- The following day, we headed out of Moscow on an afternoon train but not before checking out Moscow’s cosmonaut memorial, possibly the coolest memorial ever with a huge silver thing with a rocket on top and sweet pictures of Lenin and spacemen…cosmonauts are cool.
From travels 08 blogphotos 
From travels 08 blogphotos 
From travels 08 blogphotos We also wandered over to this soviet exhibition area, around 2km long, it was soviet greatness in all its glory with Lenin statues and massive pavilions celebrating all sorts of soviet achievements from space to wheat production. I am sure when it was built all the people starving were stoked that the government was spending so much money on crazy buildings. Now it is used as a convention centre type thing with some sort of fair thing going on inside the buildings. Big cut outs of Spongebob and Mickey mouse were along the avenues so you could take your photo with them, with Lenin overlooking them in the background.
From travels 08 blogphotos Probably not what the Soviet’s had in mind for their communist country.
- It was awesome, Soviet stuff is so over the top. So a good end to Moscow. We grabbed our bags and surprisingly got tickets on another suburban train very easily (strangely the train station had English signs) out to Vladimir where were jumped on a bus to Suzdal, another golden ring town.
- Suzdal is famous for its churches, which there are something like one church for every 12 people. That is a lot of churches. We arrived pretty late so we found our hotel inside a decrepit monastery, overpriced, no English speaking staff, no shower and not hot water…hmmm. We ventured out to the quite streets and found some food and then headed back to our over patterned room. Basically there was not a lot to do over than look at churches so we just spent the morning wandering around looking at the hundreds of churches. I went and looked inside one of the monastery’s and watched a monk ring the bells which was really cool, he was up in the tower with all these ropes that he played with his hands and feet for about 20 mins to make cool sounding bell music. It was pretty cool to watch him do it. After a circle of the town and seeing around 50 more churches, plus some wedding parties of course we grabbed our bags and heading off. Nice place but lots and lots of churches that are all a little similar by now.
Tags: blogsherpa, church, golden-ring, Moscow, Russia, sergiev-posad, Suzdal, TRAVELS 2008
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