Vivaldi Concert

On Saturday evening Sveta took us to see the Transfiguration Cathedral. It is still a working cathedral so we got to see part of the service while we were there which was interesting. There was a lot of bowing and incense burning. 

This is the cathedral from the outside:

I loved the fence that went around it with the two-headed eagle on top of the upside down cannons. 

After the cathedral we went to Teremok, Sveta's favorite restaurant, and had blini. I of course had my classic chocolate and banana blini. So delicious. 

From there we headed to the Smolny Cathedral for the Vivaldi concert we got tickets to last week. On the way there we passed this pub. I thought it was just about the cleverest name for a pub ever, so I took my photo with it. 

The "Wild Oscar Pub." I knew my dad would have gotten a kick out of the name too.

The concert was pretty incredible. The first half was an orchestra and a women's chorus. I do not love attending concerts for women's chorus, so the second half was preferable for me because the chorus left and it was just the orchestra. The music was so beautiful and the acoustics were incredible in the building. 

While we were in the concert they set up this giant bell outside. It wasn't there before we went in, and it was when we came out. Too cool.

Such a beautiful cathedral!

Speed Dress Ups

A most excellent person gave me the great idea of playing speed dress ups with my kids at school. It made for some pretty awesome photos. Thanks Mark for the best idea ever. 

Alina trying on the pants that were a little too big:

The full outfit. It took her some 2 minutes to put it all on, so I don't know if these kids fully understood the speed part of the game, but they sure liked dressing up!

The pants were ginormous on Dosha. Pretty sure her and Alina could have fit together in just one leg of them.

Alina and Mila opted to help Dosha get dressed:

So stylish:

Gotta love these girls!

They wanted me to dress up too. I was much faster, though not as cute in the end.

Alina and I:

In the older group only Sonya and Andre wanted to dress up. Once again, the pants were huge.

Sonya and I raced to put on the dress ups and I most definitely won. 

Andre was all about wearing the pink jacket, don't ask me why, but he loved it.

Pita, Anya, and Tyoma opted just to watch, but they sure loved cheering us on and telling us how to put on the clothes.

We played at the kindergarten too. The kids were really into wearing my purple coat for some reason. They also understood the concept of putting the clothes on as fast as you can much better. Here is Nikita racing to get dressed:

He is all about posing, so I had to include several photos.

Somehow this is a very common pose in my classes among the boys. Every time we talk about being strong they start out just flexing their arms and then next thing I know all of their shirts are up. 

Sasha struggled with getting the pants on.

But he rocked my jacket better than I do in the end.

And for whatever reason, Lonya opted to wear the dress. 

Cute kids.

Tikhvin Cemetery and Smolny Cathedral

On Saturday we headed over to Ploshad Aleksandra Nevskogo metro stop in order to see Tikhvin Cemetery, where lots of famous Russians are buried. Here is the view from where we got off the metro:

In the cemetery they had little street signs pointing to where certain people were buried. This one points you to Dostoevsky's grave.

The cemetery was gorgeous because all of the tombstones were different.

Dostoevsky's grave:

I was just having a very Dostoevsky-filled weekend after visiting his house, reading his book The Idiot every time I was on the metro, and visiting his grave. Makes me feel very Russian. 

Again, so beautiful:

Tchaikovsky's grave:

We learned this move when we saw Swan Lake, so we had to perform it in front of his grave:

Me as the black swan:

Just across the way is another cemetery where they have brought all sorts of tombstones, so it looks super crowded. It wasn't originally this crowded, but now I guess it is a graveyard of tombstones. Interesting. But cool. 

This one belonged to a man who fell asleep while on guard duty at the palace and the Tsar saw him asleep on the job. When he heard that the Tsar had seen him sleeping he died of a heart attack right then. 

Pushkin's wife, Natalia Lanskaya's grave:

The Alexander Nevsky monastery near the cemetery with lots of pigeons. If only Mark had been there to catch one. 

Surprise! All of the canals and rivers have moving water instead of ice!

After seeing the cemetery, we headed over to Smolny Convent. On our way we stopped at a couple of palaces that Sveta wanted us to see. First stop was Wedding Palace, where lots of people get married, including Sveta's son.

The group in the entryway: 

Sveta insisted on taking our photo with the flowers:

A bear we met along the way:

The Baby Palace. Conveniently located only a few buildings down from the wedding palace is the palace where you register your baby. Not entirely sure what that entails, but a nice woman who worked there invited us all to come register our babies when we have them.

Again, Sveta loves the flower:

At last! We arrived at the Smolny Cathedral! Isn't it gorgeous?

We loved it.

Sveta and I with the Cathedral. She is the best.

I love Russia if you couldn't tell.

We went into the cathedral and discovered that they were going to have a Vivaldi concert next Saturday and tickets were only 200 rubles. That is like $6, so obviously we were all over those tickets. We also got tickets to visit the bell towers. We climbed some 300 stairs or so and came upon this incredible view:

So pretty, right?

It was so windy in the tower. Hello rats nest in my hair!

But so worth the view.

Seriously though, if it weren't for these bars all of us would have blown over the side. 

These are the stairs on the way down. Just a little scary. 

The group in the stairwell:

Despite the scary stairs, we went up to the second bell tower. Good thing we did, cause it was also so beautiful.

Love this cathedral. Can't wait to come back for the concert next week!