Kickin' About

The next leg of our journey, a visit to our son, Brad, and his fiancee, Alexandra (Sasha), in Moscow. A bumpy 4 hour flight from Istanbul with Turkish Airlines, and their in-flight service is certainly not at the same level as Emirates! Great views over the Black Sea Coast, though, as we skirted around the no-fly area until we reached Romania when we were whited out until halfway over Belarus. At least our Visa passed the mustard test through immigration when we arrived.

Brad & Sasha met us at the airport and then it was experiencing the Moscow metro to get to the hotel, a quicker option than taking a taxi. The older Metro stations have a variety of artwork styles, which can be quite ornate and a tourist excursion in itself.

The afternoon was spent walking our legs off 😉 catching the Metro with Brad & Sasha to the city centre, Red Square. We wandered through the square past the Kremlin and Lenin’s Tomb, the iconic St Basil’s cathedral at the end of the square.

We strolled on down towards the Moskva River, where there’s a cantilever viewing bridge over the roadway and river. There are crowds of tourists (mostly all Russian as few westerners are around) walking through the Square and to the river bank. Brad & Sasha have a love of Georgian food, so we enjoyed Georgian fare at a local restaurant in the evening.

The hotel Brad organised for us is a relic of the Soviet era and 5 Star by those standards, the Golden Ring Hotel. It is quite opulent and breakfast includes ‘Champagne’ and a Harp player.

We were roomed on the 15th floor. On the 22nd floor is a Winter Garden reception room and up a level is a restaurant, both with great views at night and in the day.

The second day started with a quick trip to the southern part of Gorky Park. From there, we strolled north through the park. This is a lovely space, well maintained and presented and with plenty of activities and refreshments for families. Also saw some playful squirrels amongst the trees. There was even a Squirrel Cafe, on the menu was nuts, seeds & dried fruits etc!

We followed the river past the park towards the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. Along the way is an impressive monument to Peter the Great.

Day 3 in Moscow and a change of hotel to the Ibis Kievsky, across the river from where we were. It’s been full-on since we left home and with Brad & Sasha preparing for their big day tomorrow, we’ve had a much needed and nice relaxing rest day. We enjoyed a wander around a large shopping mall 100m from the hotel. It’s the fashion for a lot of retailers to use English words in their names and labelling! And it can be quite fun buying things with the language barrier but everyone does it in good spirit here 😊. They can often identify and recognise the basic english words like Thank You, and they are thrilled when you compliment their use of english but the blank smiles I get when I use Maori or Samoan is quite amusing 🤣.

The next day, Brad & Alexandra’s wedding. In Russia, they have a civil ceremony one day and at a later time, they hold the Celebration. The Civil ceremony is at a government office, just a 15-minute ceremony. Today, Sasha’s mum & her husband, her sister and 4 of their friends came for the Civil ceremony. It was an absolutely fabulous day, with champagne in a park after the ceremony, then onto a river front restaurant.

The next day sees us off on an excursion long weekend to the family Dacha (weekend house), 1-1/2 hour train trip out of Moscow. It is common for city families to have a country dacha to escape the city during the short summer, usually locked down during the long snow-blanketed winter. From the train ‘station’ (a pair of platforms in the middle of nowhere) we walked 15 mins through the forest to the dacha village, a collection of dacha houses in a village clearing with forest all around. A nice sunny afternoon so time to haul out the charcoal cooker and have dinner outside.

The next day has dawned grey and wet, very few people are at the dacha village at the moment so it is a quiet chill-out time. Sasha’s parents (Tania & Zhenya) arrived late this evening and some traditional meals are being prepared for tomorrow.

Saturday and the Dacha village is alive, people coming for the weekend and getting stuck into property maintenance. With the neighbours, Brad & I went mushroom foraging in the forest, the Russians call it ‘Silent Hunting’. There are all sorts of mushrooms there but most not good for eating, we were searching for ‘Little Foxes’. There were many types of frogs jumping clear of us as we foraged but little other wildlife.

Sasha’s friends finally arrived during the afternoon and Zhenya got into preparing the Plov, a rice-based dish with meat, vegetables and spices, popular in Central Asia and other regions. Zhenya is originally from Uzbekistan. After dinner, the Plov, Zhenya got the Samovar tea maker out and fired it up. We all went outside and enjoyed raspberry jam, cherry and black currant conserves that Tania had made with tea made with the samovar. The meal and supper were all very traditional for Russia.

And all too soon, it’s time to leave the dacha. We will see everyone again in Saint Petersburg, but for now, Brad hired a car and with Sasha, we drove back to Moscow. On the way, we took a diversion to Borodino, the site of an epic battle between the Russians and the French lead by Napoleon in 1812. The battle ground is just fields now with numerous monuments. There is a really good museum at the main monument site.

Tomorrow is our second week in Russia. We’re off to Suzdal and then to Saint Petersburg, that will be for another issue of the blog.