Speaking of wonderful places located far away from the center of Moscow, one should not forget Kolomenskoe. This park in the southern part of the city is a nice place to spend a few hours - or the whole day - on the lawns, at the river banks, in the shadows or in the sunshine, whatever you like.
Here you can not only relax - but enjoy a few nice pieces of Russian architecture, both wooden and stone. And almost every weekend festivals of folk music, folklore events, parades or concerts happen here - there is no other place in Moscow that presents such a proper background for such festivities. When I was taking pictures of Kolomenskoe, enchanting sounds were hovering all over the place, somewhat similar to bell music, but not exactly. A musician was using a set of huge metal plates and various hammers to produce the melody. This music did obviously belong here, between the old walls, domes, and trees...
Arriving to Kolomenskoe by metro or by car, you can leave it by a boat. Other boat rides that I have already described at these pages (see May 2000 story, for example), go through the center of the city and offer majestic views of the Kremlin, Cathedral of Christ the Savior, and other standard tourist attractions. The boat from Kolomenskoe takes us through less spectacular areas of the city, bedroom communities and industrial districts. But in the summer cool air and the water are what matters, not only views! And some views may be funny even here...
The sun sets late in May and June in Moscow, and the night life starts when the rooftops are still reddish from the low sun rays. Summer in Moscow is a quiet season in the theaters - but in clubs and concert halls the choice of live music remains very rich. And restaurants work round the clock... There are many opportunities to go out or to dine out. But I'm not good at taking pictures of a restaurant life.
That's almost it. Enough for the early summer story, enough of overheated Moscow, let's better wait for the next one that will take us away not from just downtown, but from the city itself, to cool walls of old monasteries, cold springs at the banks of small clear rivers, and to fragrant meadows.
Two final photos - one of a fountain in the downtown which we tried to avoid all this time, another of myself drinking at the dinner with my daughter. Marina a few times appeared at these pages (first time, in summer'1995) - then as a small schoolgirl. This May she graduated from high school and a few weeks later became a student of Mathematics department of Moscow State University. Well, it's just another illustration of the age of this project. We are getting old together ;-), these pages and I...
Andrey - asebrant@online.ru
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