Strolling through Kolomenskii

Somehow, we always end up walking around red square after church activities. It was that way again Monday after FHE, where we said goodbye to the Gregorys and played a little bit of ping pong. The youth decided to go out for a stroll, and after realizing we had yet again gone to red square, we decided to take off in a different direction. Tyler and I were the fastest walkers, and ended up ahead of everyone. We walked off of red square and decided to head for the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. We made a crazy dash across a busy road, passed a little church we'd seen Saturday and went to check it out. Though most people had gotten sick of walking by the time we had taken off in this new direction, we did meet up with some of them at the cathedral.

Then Tuesday, Tyler and I decided we wanted to go see St Nicholai of the weaver's church. After getting in trouble for talking inside, we left for Tolstoy's Moscow home/museum. This was unfortunately closed--I hadn't even thought about the time. Again, 6:30 feels like 3:30. We headed over to the bus station to see how much a ticket to Rostov would be and what time the bus leaves at. Then it was off to some more wandering.

So as we wandered off, I suggested we go to Kolomenskii park. It ended up being really fun. We went and sat on a bench by an overlook of the river. I love parks in Russia--they are so beautiful and there are always a lot of people (until about 11:00 at night we would find out). After talking about how nice it was to see so much grass, we decided we should take advantage of it and go lay down in the grass. I was half tempted to roll down the hill, but restrained myself. We saw some fireworks go off, and then heard the delayed sounds of them being set off. We decided to see if we could count it like you do lightening and thunder to see how far away it was. (Note: this apparently only works with lightening. I'm certain it doesn't with fireworks anyway)

After playing a guessing game of what time it was, and finding ourselves another couple hours off, we decided we should probably head out. I imagine it was about 11:30 pm at this time. We were the only people left in this half the park (we were secretly hoping we were the only ones left, but saw two people sitting on a bench on the way out). We kept joking that we had probably gotten locked in and how funny that would be if we had to hop the fence.

The closer we got, the more I wondered if we would actually be hopping the fence. Sure enough, when we reachedthe gate, it was locked. So we hopped the fence. Okay, so I didn't really hop the fence--I was more lifted over and then down from the fence. Hey, I'm no expert at scaling high fences these days (unless they are chain link fences or little fences, then I'm totally all over that!). Tyler boosted me up, I grabbed the top of the fence, and then sat on it. "Wait, I'm really going to jump off of this?" You'd never know I've gone skydiving before. All the sudden a seven foot fence intimidates me. "Or I can jump it and help you down." "Yah, that sounds good." I'm still not sure how he did it, but he hauled himself up and over the fence, and then gave me a hand down. We stopped for pictures, cuz it's just not every day you get trapped in a park and have to escape.

As we were walking away, we heard a group of people get to the gate and find it locked. We thought it would be great to watch and see what they did. I had to laugh as a girl in a dress tried to squeeze through the bars (I had tried this myself to no avail). But, the scene didn't last long--a guard appeared with a key and let them out. Not nearly as exciting.