This past weekend our group went on an excursion to Novgorod. It was about a 3 hour bus ride one way, so, it wasn’t too long of a trip, but it was gloomy and sprinkled the whole time. And I loved it! Even though Novgorod is a small city (only 250,000 citizens compared to St. Petersburg’s 5 million) filled with churches, it was beautiful. We went on a ‘walking tour of the city’ which turned out to be us standing by churches listening to our tour guide talk about them, but I enjoyed it (I mean, I couldn’t have a bad time. I was in Novgorod). After that we went on a tour of the Kremlin. It was amazing! We spent a lot of time listening to the tour guide talk about a beautiful statue located in the Kremlin. It really was amazing (and of course I didn’t have any batteries because it is impossible for me to find AA batteries in Russia at a store that’s open)! Then we went and toured Софийский Собор (the Cathedral of Saint Sophia). Oh. My. Gosh. It is the most beautiful cathedral that I have visited! The inside of Russian Orthodox cathedrals are absolutely gorgeous. (For people who want to know what the inside looks like, I’ll post links at the bottom of the blog, seeing as it’s forbidden for tourists to take pictures.) Also, women are supposed to wear scarves on their head whenever inside a cathedral, so, I felt pretty authentic. haha A couple of my friends and I stayed a bit after the tour and found out that they have services there every day by actually experiencing part of the service. It was pretty bomb.
The next day we went on an excursion outside of Novgorod to the Yuriev Monastery. That was also pretty beautiful, AND I took a few pictures because I found one battery. After that we went on a tour of a wooden architecture museum outside of Novgorod called Vitoslavlitsy. It was a place where all of the building were made completely out of wood and it was created in the 16th century. That was pretty cool, except the inside of everything was made for people under the height of 5′ 6″. Then we finally returned and I almost ate a whole pizza. It was nice to return to Saint Petersburg. It’s weird to say that it feels familiar seeing as I’ve only lived here for 3 weeks, but also pretty rad.
Also, I am going to Swan Lake tomorrow!!! =D
Link to Cathedral of Saint Sophia (first page, third and sixth pictures in):
http://www.google.ru/images?hl=ru&newwindow=1&biw=1280&bih=537&gbv=2&tbs=isch%3A1&sa=1&q=Cathedral+of+Saint+Sophia+Novgorod&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=
You look cold!