Sightseeing with Svetlana

On Sunday, Svetlana took us sightseeing around Moscow. Only a few blocks from our apartment is a little-known musuem called the Vasnetsov House-Museum. Viktor Vasnetov was a famous Russian painter (1848-1926) who was known for his paintings of Russian fairy tales. We toured his log-cabin house and art studio.

Tamara was not feeling well so we went into an Apteka (pharmacy) where Svetlana picked out some cold medicine for her. We then dropped Tamara back off at the apartment so she could rest (editorial comment from Tamara: if one can call sweating to death and trying to fan oneself 'rest').

On the way to the Prospect Mir metro station we saw the stadiums from the 1980 Summer Olympics.








Next we travelled by metro to Kolomsenskoe, an outdoor historic park on a bluff over the Moskva river southeast of the city. Of course, Kolomenskoe is on the List :) It is the fomer country estate of the Tsars and the site of their country palace, since destroyed. At Kolomenskoe, we toured Peter the Great's log cabin (moved from Archangel), saw the famous Church of the Ascension, which was being restored, and saw many Muscovites out sunbathing in the park.















On the way back Svetlana took us on a tour of the Moscow metro stations. Each of the older stations has a unique architectural style and most are quite impressive.






Our friends from Evanston, Meg and Tim, came by the apartment to pick us up for dinner. They just adopted a little boy named Kyrill (who they will now call Finnian. Yes, Meg is Irish) from Chuvashia and luckily had their 10 days waived. We went out to dinner at a nearby Russian restaurant to celebrate, where we lifted our glasses of Russian vodka in a toast.