Three years in Moscow: Hermitage Garden

Supporters of the Geelong Australian Rules football club may be amused by this Moscow milk carton. This link will help those sadly deprived people who do not follow Australian Rules football understand what I mean - http://www.geelongcats.com.au/

It’s quite a sunny afternoon, nice after an extended period of gloom. It doesn’t help that Moscow is in a permanent state of daylight saving, which means it still doesn’t get light until around 9.30am. Nice in the afternoons, but 5 months of getting up in the dark is difficult.

Last Sunday was also fairly pleasant, so we took a walk to the Hermitage Garden which is located on Ulitsa Karetnyy Ryad, close to where it joins the Garden Ring (which is actually a multi-laned traffic snarl of a ring road).

This small, manicured park, opened in 1894, surrounds the Hermitage Theatre. In summer the gardens are popular with wedding groups, people quietly sitting and reading, and kids running around the playground. In winter, there is a skating rink, but otherwise not much to do other than take a short stroll along the snowy paths.

Childrens' slippery dip (slide) sculpted from ice. Photographed in the Hermitage Garden last Sunday (20 Jan)

What I particularly like about this park is the Art Nouveau fence and entrance. Still, being currently ranked 547 out of 592 things to do in Moscow by the Lonely Planet, I doubt too many tourists will be seeing it.

The rest of these photos I took last summer - the gardens are at their best in the summer and I need to remind myself occasionally that there is such a thing.