A Day in the Moscow Country....

A group of us took a day trip out into the country to a place called Sergai Posad (about a one and a half hour car ride out of the city) where we met up with a woman who owns a bed & breakfast, her name was Sveta. Sveta coordinates Troika rides through the forest and Monastery tours of the old Monasteries in the city of Sergai Posad. (She also has a banya...too bad Jim didn't come along....we all know where he would have been....)

As soon as we arrived at Sveta's home she had the table set for us for breakfast - homemade Blinni's (thin Russian pancakes) with homemade jam and honey. WOW were they good! Afterwards we loaded into a van and drove into the country to the edge of this forest where we met our Troika's - for those of you who aren't sure about what a troika is - it's a horse drawn sleigh - (these sleighs fit 6 so we had two sleighs.) After a ride through the forest we came to the campsite where a camp fire was burning and lunch was being prepared....we roasted hot dogs on the fire and a few of us dressed in Russian costumes and even went sled riding! What a fun afternoon.

After our Troika ride, Sveta took us on a tour of Cave Monastery and then cooked us a lovely dinner....check out the photos below. For me, even after living in Moscow for 7 months now - this day was a true Russian experience that I will never forget....

Our group in front of the Troika - 6 people could fit in each sleigh

Here we are on the Troika

This was our campsite at the end of our Troika ride through the woods - to the right you can see a camp fire where we roasted hot dogs and drank champagne and vodka - they didn't bring anything else to drink - interesting but this is Russia...aka - TIR


Here I am next to our camp site at a cave with...look closely - A BEAR - WOW!?!
We really are out in the middle of nowhere?

These are a couple of us dressed as babushkas - as the Russian's call old ladies- except the one in the middle really is the babushka who served us lunch..... Too bad she isn't smiling bigger - you could see her gold teeth....TIR.

After our Troika trip we took a tour of the Cave Monastery located in the town of Sergai Posad. The monastery was founded in 1846 by monks who lived underneath the monastery in caves.

This is the entrance to the caves where the Monks would live - most Monks lived for only 5 to 7 years this way. They would pray all day long and sleep in these caves - no heat - no light and they only ate bread and water (which may be another reason why they only lived 5 to 7 years)

Here we are after the Troika and after the Monastery tour - Sveta has made us a wonderful dinner.....oh the food! Dinner started off with sliced meats and cheeses with breads, orange slices, and of course a Russian meal wouldn't be complete with out pickled herring!!?!? Next came Borscht, a very traditional Russian soup made with beets. Next came a crock of stew made of potatoes, mushrooms, beef and topped with mayo - sounds kinda gross but was it good! Finally dessert was home-made apple pie - and did I mention that this was all accompanied by vodka and shampawnsky (as champagne is pronounced in Russian....) After dinner Sveta pulled out the Karaoke machine and we sang a few hits - boy did we sound good after all the shampawnsky......

Embassies of the World Dinner & Ball

This past weekend we had the opportunity to go to our very first ball! It was a lot of fun!!! The ball is called the Embassies of the World Dinner and Ball and is put together by the IWC or the International Women's Club of Moscow (which I am a member.) The night works like this.....You start the night off with dinner at an embassy - the embassy we were assigned to have dinner with was the Embassy of the United States of America - we didn't have dinner at the embassy but at the residence of the US Ambassador, William Burns and his wife Lisa Carty. We had a wonderful dinner and actually Jim sat next to Lisa and I sat next to the Ambassador - this was REALLY cool! For dinner we had Asparagus Soup, Shrimps in Pernod Sauce, Rack of lamb with a walnut and herb crust followed by Pavlova for dessert...I wasn't sure which knife/fork to use but watched the Ambassador and followed suit.....

The dinner table at the Ambassador's residence

The group that ate at the US Ambassador's - only two couples were American's. (The US Ambassador & his wife are directly across from Jim and I to the left)


Us on the staircase at the Ambassador's house

After dinner we left the ambassador's home for Tsarityno Grand Palace. This palace was designed for Catherine the Great, but she never actually lived there, it was abandoned and left in ruins uncompleted. The palace is located in the southern part of Moscow, forty minutes from downtown by car. The palace was reconstructed and finally completed in 2007. Click on the following link for a rundown of the night by Russia Today:

http://www.russiatoday.ru/entertainment/news/20840/video

Professional dancers opening the ball

The Steering Committee of the IWC - I am one of 3 American's on the committee.

Friends Jim and Mary posed with us at the ball

How about a little Ice Skating on Red Square??

This afternoon the weather was perfect - sunny with the temperature hovering right around freezing!!

Clearly our expectations for great weather have changed since moving to Moscow. If we can see the SUN and the temperature is greater than 32 degrees Fahrenheit or about 0 degrees Celcius we can't wait to get outside!

So with the perfect weather we pulled out our new ice skates (that we purchased since moving here) and headed to Red Square. Right there - in the middle of Red Square - they built a temporary, but almost full size ice rink for the winter skating season. It is quite amazing to go ice skating in front of St. Basil's Cathedral, the Kremlin, and Lenin's tomb! What a great time!!

St. Basil's on the left and the Kremlin on the right!!!

Believe it or not, the sun was out almost the entire

time we were on the rink -
except when we took this photo!!

Last time on ice skates prior to this outing -

Junior High!!

Night at the Kremlin

Back in November one of my friends at work and I decided to purchase tickets for the Gipsy Kings concert. Not that I'm a huge Gypsy King's fan...but what the heck?!? We rounded up a little help at work to figure out how to exactly purchase concert tickets and thought we were so lucky to have gotten the last four remaining seats at the concert, even if they were in the second to last row....

At least that is what they told us.........

Eventually we got the actual tickets and were a little surprised to see the face value of the tickets we purchased were actually only a quarter of the price we had paid.....

Oh well......but we did get the last 4 tickets......

So this past Friday night we showed up at the Kremlin for the show. The Kremlin State Palace, is possibly one of the largest music halls I have ever been in and is located inside the Kremlin walls. You can read a little about it at the link below.

http://www.kreml.ru/en/main/kremlin/buildings/GKD/

After finding our seats (in the second to last row) and waiting for the show to start the ushers walked up and down the aisles yelling something crazy in Russian that, as usual, we could not quite understand. Quickly, all of the people around us got up out of their seats and made a mad dash for closer, better seats....Clearly the concert had not been sold out....So we moved forward too!

At any rate, we settled into our newly found seats and I opened up the concert program that I had purchased on the way in the front door. I didn't even think about it......until I opened up the program to find out that the entire program was in Russian. That was a few rubles well spent?!?

The infamous Gipsy Kings program -

"Gipsy Kings" are the only two words we could read in the program...

The Gipsy Kings in concert!!!