Cobblestone Cupcakes: Visiting the homes of Russia's rich, famous, and dead (and also 1000 churches)

Fair warning: this is basically going to be a compilation of photos with the occasional commentary thrown in. I'm not feeling verbose today.

Wednesday after class, I made the trip out to Catherine II's estate (which is still fairly close to the center of Moscow).

Catherine's house

managed to take a selfie masterpiece

because why not have your church across the lawn

I feel like Catherine's estate is a cross between Hogwarts and the Shire. Hobbits at Hogwarts.

giant fountain with light show every night at 9!

(that means I <3 Moscow)

Friday was our day trip to Tula/Yasnaya Polyana. (Yasnaya Polyana = Tolstoy's estate)

Tolstoy was a bit more of a modest guy than Catherine II, so the coolest part about his estate was how green it was. Very peaceful, very photosynthetic.

the last remaining stone of Tolstoy's childhood home

Tolstoy's grave

random church in Tula (the nearby town) with super edgy black domes

nice periwinkle church inside the Tula Kremlin

Saturday, after eating some overpriced but reasonably good Mexican food, I went to the Cathedral of Christ the Savior.

And then today, I visited the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, which (as you may have guessed by the lack of onion domes), is Catholic! I stuck around for the Mass, which was spoken in a stitched-together mixture of English, French, and Tagalog. Also, I ran into people from Baylor, so...that was cool.

This afternoon, I finally made it out to the Cosmonaut Museum, which was clearly kind of intended to be a church by the architects, judging by this Christ-like Yuri Gagarin/stained glass combo in the main hall.