Miss Swan Goes to Russia: Part II

Before my trip I listened to hours of podcasts and read articles on Russian rulers (ok, they were Wiki articles, and I was mostly on Pinterest - but I did still read some). When I arrived though, I had nothing to show for it except a jumbled list of Russian names (and some new hair-braiding ideas). How many Dmitrys and Ivans do we really need, here?

Something I did manage to retain from my Russian history blitz was that 'Ivan the Terrible' is just the tip of the iceberg for awesome tsar names: How would you like to be referred to as 'the Handsome', 'the Quietest', 'the Cross-Eyed', or 'the Big Nest'? I also remember that blinding people seemed to be all the rage, and that one guy threw so many corpses into the river that they permanently rerouted its course. <eck>

Back to pictures, because if you read blogs the way I read blogs, you didn't read those last two paragraphs and are feverishly scrolling down the page to get to the good stuff:

Moscow Metros

Nope, I'm not in an art gallery - these are the Moscow metro stations, baby!

You can thank Stalin for all the propaganda in this "underground communist paradise"



These are some of the deepest subways in the world - my ears popped as we went down the escalator

My favorite station - puts the DC metro to shame.

Even the air vents were subtly flexing the communist muscle

Novodevichy Cemetary

Bless Lauren's soul for not strangling me as I attempted to read every cyrillic tombstome

First man in space, I really should know his name

Palace of the Boyars - Home of the Romanovs