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Russia: 10 best events and attractions
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Russia Travel - Hotels,
Sightseeing Tours, Attractions, Information |
Late summer is a great time to visit
Moscow
and
St Petersburg.
1. Take an up and under view
There are a few cities in the world where public transport is a tourist
sight, rather than a means of getting to one. Moscow is one of them. Its
subterranean museum of a metro system is as picture-perfect as the Kremlin -
and about as hard to get into during rush hour. In steaming summer months
it's still worth pushing and shoving with the locals to take a short journey
on the historic blue Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya metro line. But once you've had
enough of the heat, go above ground and take a taxi. The water taxi service
plying the Moskva river and canals is one of the most pleasant ways to
navigate this sprawling city in warmer months. The Moskva makes an arc of
the city centre and within its boundaries are most of Moscow's major
attractions. Start at Kiev railway station and pick up a boat snaking
south-west along the Kremlin walls for the best cityscape. You can jump on
and off en route, each ride costs 100 roubles (£2).
2. Munch among the missiles
While there's a lot to be said for snowy strolls, the warmer months are the
most civilised time to visit Moscow's open-air museums. This is also when
these museums, set in open parkland, double up as picnic and promenade
spots. A case in point is Victory Park, home to the Central Armed Forces
Museum. Couples can be found taking post-prandial strolls amid the tanks,
combat machinery and strategic missiles that are dotted around the grounds,
or idling at the fountain at the park entrance, which is lit a gloriously
gory red on autumn evenings. Marginally less surreal is the sculpture park
in the grounds of the Tretyakov Art Gallery. This "graveyard to fallen
monuments" houses social realist statues of the Soviet era. Along with
numerous Stalins, including the enormous statue that stood outside the
Bolshoi Theatre, there is a rather gruesome bust of "Iron Felix", the Cheka
secret policeman Felix Dzerzhinsky, which was pulled down by crowds outside
the KGB headquarters in 1991. Iron Felix now overlooks a spooky sculpture
dedicated to those who died in the gulags. Perhaps in an effort to bring a
little cheer, the mainstay of this collection represents something of an
international hall of fame in which the heads of Shakespeare and Einstein
keep random company next to Dostoevsky and Tolstoy.
The Central Armed Forces Museum, Ulitsa Sovetskoy Armii 2 (00 7 095 681
5367; www.armymuseum.ru), is open
Wednesday-Sunday, 10am-5pm. Tretyakov Sculpture Park, Krymsky Val 10 (00 7
095 230 7788), is open Tuesday-Sunday, 10am-8pm.
3. Grab a deckchair on the beach
Thanks to the bestseller by Martin Cruz Smith and subsequentfilm, Moscow's
Park of Culture and Recreation, Gorky Park, is widely known in the West. The
park, named after Marxist writer Maxim Gorky, is a 3km stretch of public
recreation area by the Moskva river. Laid out in 1928 as a funfair in
ornamental gardens, hedonism has reached unprecedented heights in Gorky Park
with the introduction of a beach. OK, Moscow's equivalent of Paris Plage is
not exactly on the river and the "beach" is sand-free but this is a uniquely
New Russian experience. Cast aside the medical certificate you often need
for city pools, grab a deckchair and listen to a DJ spinning an assortment
of lounge and chill-out tunes. Hang on until after dark, and the volume gets
turned up, the deckchairs folded away, and you'll find yourself among one of
Moscow's most scantily-clad clubbing crowds.
Gorky Beach, 9 Ul Krymsky Val, Gorky Park. Open daily, 11am-12am, until end
of Sept.
4. Book early for the Bolshoi
Moscow's Bolshoi Theatre, literally"big" theatre, takes its tutus on
assorted international tours during August. This year it reopenson 10
September with a series of its latest hit opera productions, one after the
other. Opera fans could come for a week and see two or three award-winning
stagings from the Russian repertoire that is less commonelsewhere. The
inaugural performance is a new interpretation of Puccini's Madame Butterfly.
Ballet fans shouldn't miss the latest Swan Lake.
The Bolshoi Theatre (00 7 095 974 7317;
www.bolshoi.ru).
5. Order borscht for two, with a view
Follow up your performance with some post-theatre dining. To remain a cut
above these days you have to offer "terrace" dining. One of the city's
popular al fresco spots is Coffemania (13, Bolshaya Nikitskaya, 00 7 095 924
0075) with a terrace facing the Moscow Conservatory. On warm mornings, due
to an air-conditioning system as rickety as the grand old building itself,
the conservatory throws open its windows and restaurant patrons are treated
to a preview of coming performances. In the evenings, diners can watch
Moscow's best-dressed music cognoscenti file in and out of the theatre,
while eating posh versions of cold borscht (beetroot soup) and nouveau
Russian salads. An outdoor venue with "face control" (a snooty door policy)
is Park, just outside Gorky Park's back gate. Low tables, Kazak rugs and
hammock-style seating supply the Asian theme. Couple this with plentiful
hookah pipes and a river view and you could almost kid yourself you were
looking out over Istanbul's Bosphorus. Service is slow and not a little
sniffy, but the food, a mixture of Uzbek, Russian and central Asian, is
great. This is one of the best places to watch well-heeled locals knocking
back the bubbly while dining on gentrified versions of the street vendor's
favourite, shashlik, a skewer kebab.
Park, 9 Krymsky Val (00 7 095 954 1673).
6. Promenade around the palaces
Autumn is the best time to see St Petersburg's summer palaces. The suburbs
are home to the great palaces of Catherine the Great - Peterhof and
Pavlovsk. In September you get the best of their formal gardens, follies and
fountains, minus the queues of tour buses. September is also the last time
you can see the "trick" fountains designed by Peter the Great at Peterhof
before they close for the winter. This complex system of pressure-activated
fountains were what constituted a good gag in early Tsarist Russia, giving
unsuspecting dignitaries a soaking as they took a turn around the gardens of
the "Russian Versailles". The Grand Cascade, with its three enormous
waterfalls and 64 fountains, is the centrepiece, all fed by pressure from
underground rivers wending their way to the Gulf of Finland. The great
palace at Peterhof (00 7 812 427 7425) is open 11am-6pm, closed Mondays and
the last Tuesday of the month. Tours are from 11am-5pm. A train from
Baltiyskaya Railway Station to New Peterhof Station takes 35 minutes. From
there, pick up one of the many buses going to the palace's Park stop. Tour
boats travel to Peterhof from the Hermitage Museum Wharf until the end of
September. Taxi-buses make the same journey from Prospect Veteranov,
Baltiyskaja and Leninsky Prospect metro stations.
Pavlovsk (00 7 812 470 2155,
www.pavlovsk.org) is open Saturday to Thursday, 10am-5pm, closed on the
first Monday of the month, restricted access on Thursday. A train from
Vitebsk Station to Pavlovsk takes about 30 minutes. The main entrance to the
park is opposite the station. Buses 280, 283, 493 connect the station to the
Great Palace. Catherine's Palace (http://eng.
tzar.ru) is open 10am-5pm, closed Tuesday and the last Monday of the
month.
7. Float down the Neva
Get out on to St Petersburg's complex web of waterways before they freeze.
From water level you begin to see why St Petersburg gets its epithet, the
Venice of the North. Autumn is the best time to get out on to the Neva river
and connecting canals - it's warm enough, and midsummer's congestion has
gone. Tourist boats can be found at regular intervals along the waterways.
The trick is to hop on to one that's almost full (unless you don't mind
bobbing around until it fills up) and double check that the commentary is in
English. To avoid the rather relentless nasal commentary that characterises
these cruises, which cost around £7 an hour, take a water taxi. Introduced
to St Petersburg this year, the taxis have fixed routes, compulsory stops
and you can ride all day for 350 roubles (£6.60) or 30 roubles (60p) per
ride. The stops haven't been signposted yet but the blue and white
waterbuses have pretty obvious moorings outside key sights.
8. Get an earful at the opera
St Petersburg is the birthplace of Russian literature, ballet and opera, and
the city's cultural season is a world heavyweight. At the pinnacle of this
artistic apex is the Mariinsky Theatre, formerly known as the Kirov and home
to the Kirov Opera and Ballet. The theatre may be associated with dancers
such as Pavlova, Nijinsky and Nureyev, but the current buzz here is opera.
This is the first love of artistic director Valery Gergiev, the man
responsible for keeping the theatre on its financial feet during the early
1990s. After a long summer closed for international tours, the new season
opens on 20 September with Tchaikovsky's late masterpiece The Queen of
Spades, conducted by Gergiev himself, and continues with Carmen, Turandot
and Eugene Onegin.
The Mariinksy Theatre (00 7 812 326 4141;
www.mariinsky.ru/en).
9. Ramble like a Romanov
Late September is known as Golden Autumn in St Petersburg, and this is the
best time to see the gardens surrounding Pavlovsk Palace. Once the hunting
grounds of the Tsars, this 1,500-acre estate on the outskirts of St
Petersburg was landscaped and designed for autumn flowering trees and
shrubs. It's also the least known of the royal palaces. This is the only
former Tsarist residence where you can stroll around like a Romanov, with
acres of gardens and woodland to yourself.
See above for details of Pavlovsk Palace.
10. Get hooked on classics
Autumn in St Petersburg heralds a programme of classical music festivals.
The Early Music Festival from 20 September to 4 October invites you to
"immerse yourself in the music of the 18th century's youngest and most
fashionable court, the Russian Imperial Court". Featuring Russia's only
baroque orchestra, playing alongside musicians from Flanders, Belgium, Italy
and the United States, concerts take place in an enticing list of venues,
including the State Conservatoire, the Hermitage Theatre, Pavlovsk Palace,
Catherine's Palace and the Great Palace at Peterhof. Contact The Early Music
Festival (www.earlymusic.ru/en/festival/index.html).
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