If you have been losing sleep over how to get your hands on all those amazing Russian crafts I wrote about last week, fret no more. Izmaylovo Vernisazh to the rescue! Vernisazh (derived from French “Vernissage” or a preview for an art show) is Moscow’s, if not Russia’s, biggest and best known market for all…
I know good burgers. Nearly two decades state-side will do that to a girl. So trust me when I tell you that Lumberjack has the best burgers in Moscow. Moscow has no shortage of burger joints and I have tried plenty: from the relatively new-to-Moscow Shake Shack, to BB & Burgers (the first two Bs…
March 8th is the International Women’s Day. In Russia it is also an unofficial start of Spring. The reason for this association is probably the custom of giving flowers to all the women in one’s life – family, romantic, platonic, professional. The resulting abundance of blooms everywhere screams “Spring Is in the Air!” In reality,…
I told you Moscow had Easter Eggs galore this year. Can you pick just one? (Each egg has a name when you click on it and view as slideshow)
Moscow REALLY turned up Easter this year. Word on the street was, city officials have decided that with all the #sanctions, ruble woes, Ukraine and endless winter the people needed some extra cheering up this year. And so, Christmas decorations stayed up all the way through March, only to be immediately replaced by Easter decorations…
That’s right, I have lived through my teens and 20s without ever going on a pub crawl. Granted, I have crawled out of my share of bars and pubs across the United States and Europe, but I’ve never imbibed in more than a couple of establishments per night, preferring stationary hang-outs to hit-and-runs. As a…
Before they became Tzars and Emperors of the Russian Empire, the Romanovs were prominent boyars (nobles) and lived in Moscow. Their house in Moscow’s oldest neighborhood, Kitay Gorod, was built in the 1500s out of stone – a rarity at that time – and was practically a palace in those days. It was painstakingly restored…
The small, pedestrian Patriarch’s Bridge connects the northern crescent of the city with Bolotny (Bog) Island in the Moscow River, and offers some of the best panoramas of central Moscow. It begins right behind Cathedral of Christ the Savior, the tallest (and one of the largest) Orthodox Christian church in the world, erected to commemorate…
“Anna” and “vegetarian” do not go together, unless to express how strongly “Anna is definitely NOT, in any way, a vegetarian, cannot imagine living without regular meat intake (chicken and fish don’t even count), and would somebody please pass a sirloin, medium rare?” It’s a good thing, then, that for the last couple of years…
For many Moscovites the Old Arbat street is imbued with an almost mythical aura and a heavy dose of nostalgia. One of the most famed Russian bards, Bulat Okudzhava, even sang “oh Arbat, my Arbat, you are my Fatherland…” It’s difficult to pinpoint the exact source of this reverence. Arbat’s history is very layered. In the…
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