Travel experiences across the world
Today was finally Kremlin day! Sooooo of course we woke up to 5°C and howling winds and cold rain. When I left the hotel it didn't look all that bad but I had to turn back for my umbrella and winter sweater. When I packed, mind you, the weather forecast announced 20°C and sun for… Continue reading The Kremlin, all of it, then the Bolshoi
We'd learned that the Kremlin closes on Thursdays, so our plan today was to visit the Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow's largest collection of prerevolutionary Russian art. It is the city's best known art museum along with the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, which deals in European painters, especially Impressionists. When choosing which of the two to… Continue reading The Tretyakov Gallery, St Basil, GUM
My first full day in Moscow came up cloudy but noticeably warmer than St Petersburg. As any tourist would, I went straight to the Red Square first thing in the morning!From my hotel in Arbat, I can take the metro and alight at Revolution Square just two stops away, so already I am way better… Continue reading The Red Square, the National History Museum, Tverskoy
My time in the city of the tsars has come to an end! This morning I took a seemingly endless cab ride to Moskovskaya Station; Nevsky Prospekt is a very wide and long, straight avenue, but there's so much traffic that it takes forever to ride along. Sidenote: does anybody else find it confusing to… Continue reading From St Petersburg to Moscow
Getting up and walking is becoming harder every day! Tomorrow's four-hour train ride to Moscow is starting to feel very attractive right now!Today we took the busy metro down to Nevsky and then up to Gorkovskaya to visit the Peter and Paul Fortress, a military encampment from which the city of Saint Petersburg eventually grew.… Continue reading Peter and Paul Fortress, canals, St Isaac Cathedral
Today the first order of business was our second and final visit to the Hermitage, thanks to our two-day tickets. I heartily recommend them!Yesterday's visit was very thorough and exhausting, so today I wanted to focus just on a few exhibits that I'd missed. The first among them was the Graeco-Roman sculpture wing on the… Continue reading The Hermitage: Round 2, the Church on the Spilled Blood
This crisp, sunny morning it was time to go straight to the main course of the trip, the crown jewel of St Petersburg: the Hermitage museum!Turns out Vasilievsky island isn't as well connected as I'd hoped, despite being geographically very close to the historic centre, so we ended taking a taxi. The driver was typically… Continue reading The Hermitage Museum
Another year, another adventure! This time, we're off to Russia! First St Petersburg, then Moscow. Time to put my six months of Russian lessons to the test!I flew in last night with Finnair, via Helsinki. Vantaa airport has hardwood floors -be still my beating heart- but they also sell reindeer hides, like, hope you didn't… Continue reading Peterhof
The sun shone bright this morning when we left Kanazawa and took the shinkansen back to Tokyo. As usual, the 10:56 train left the station at 10:56 on the dot. Going back to Paris is going to be devastating after these two weeks.We arrived at Tokyo Station two hours and change later, just in time… Continue reading Tokyo’s National Art Centre
I've been thwarted! Foiled! My grand idea for today was to go to Takayama, a well-preserved old town in the mountains. I'd researched beforehand that you can get there by train from Kanazawa via Toyama, but today when checking the timetables I saw that there are only like three trains a day between Toyama and… Continue reading The 21st Century Contemporary Art Museum, gold foil
This Is A Lake 