Moscow, Russia: A Tour of the Daily Life...

After many days of traditional sight-seeing, we elected to spend today getting more intimately acquainted with Russian culture and daily life by exploring the parks and the metro stations.  The first park that we went to was Tsaritsyno, the park and palace of the empress Catherine the Great ('Tsaritsyno' means 'of the tsarina).  The park was very nicely manicured, the palace was lovely, and they even had a musical fountain!  Of course, it was no comparison to the Grand Haven musical fountain (after all, no lights, and it was dancing to some not-so-fabulous tunes), but still nice.

Our next park is one of the oldest ones in Moscow, and dates from the early fifteenth century.  The Church of the Ascension, pictured above, is pre-domes and Russian Orthodox supremacy.  A note about the pose: a interesting fact of Russian culture (a daily fascination for us since entering the country) is that all people--regardless of age or sex--refuse to take a picture without first striking a pose (something like the one above) and putting an intense and/or smoldering look on their face.  Our attempts to duplicate this phenomenon are detailed above and below. 

About the pose: see above.  About the stained glass: it's in the metro station!  Many (I would say over half) of the subway stations in Moscow have gorgeous architecture and decoration: marble floors and columns, mosaics, bronze statues, detailed moldings, and stained glass are among the artworks we saw, a (good) relic of the Soviet days.  It was also a nice way to get out of the heat for a bit.

We rounded out our culture experience with traditional Russian food for dinner, and I finally got my Borscht.  I guess I can no longer claim that I don't like beets, because I gobbled this right up!