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The Moscow - St. Petersburg Weekends At the end of the second week of the five-week Ryazan' Short-Term Seminar, the group spent parts of two days in Moscow. At the end of the third week, we spend three full days in St. Petersburg. These two weekend excursions enhanced the experience by allowing the participants to visit historical and cultural sites in Russia's two largest cities. This page is devoted to the Moscow and St. Petersburg trips. |
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Moscow I have many photos of Moscow elsewhere, so I haven't included many here. In fact, there are only four: 1) the hotel Rossiya where we stayed, 2) the north entrance to the hotel, 3) a rather poor photo of the Kremlin and Red Square from St. Basil's Cathedral, and 4) some people at Izmailovsky Park preparing food. |
| The Hotel Rossiya, part of which is shown here, is said to be the largest in Russia. It is huge. Our group spent one night there as part of our two-day tour of Moscow. I must say, and it was true for most of us, that it was one of the worst nights of my life. The rooms were pleasant enough, but Moscow was having an unusually warm summer and buildings in Russia generally do not have air-conditioning. Therefore, on a hot, still, summer night in Moscow, we could not sleep because of the oppressive heat in our rooms. It was terrible! | |
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This was our entrance into the Hotel Rossiya. Each side of the hotel has an entrance. As the sign says, this was the north vestibule. I must say that our breakfast in the hotel was very good. |
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The Kremlin and Red Square are the core of Moscow and of Russia. They are always exciting to visit. This photo was taken from the steps of St. Basil's Cathedral. On the left is the northeast wall of the Kremlin. At the far right is the Lenin Museum and in the darkness along the wall is Lenin's Mausoleum. |
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During the second morning of our stay in Moscow, we went to Izmailovsky Park. This is a huge outdoor market primarily for tourists where they can by souvenirs and other stuff. The photo at left was taken while I was eating lunch. At this location were half a dozen vendors selling shashlik, bread, and softdrinks. |
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St. Petersburg St. Petersburg is a city with five million people which contains beautiful palaces, canals, and the sacred Piskarobskoye Memorial Cemetery. The photos below portray our activities while in St. Petersburg. The photos are generally in this order: Janet telling us about the Winter Palace, the Neva River adjacent to the Winter Palace, the Bronze Horseman (Peter the Great) and the Cathedral of the Spilt Blood (where Alexander I was assassinated), Peterhoff, the cemetery where victim of the 1941 - 44 siege where buried, the St. Petersburg metro, Alexander's Palace at Tsarskoye Celo, Pushkin statue, and our group waiting for Ivan to retrieve us from Moscow and take us to Ryazan'. |
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