First day in Moscow - note: smoke haze; blasting sun; completely inappropriate clothing due to suitcase misplacement.
The wall turret of the convent from the cemetary of (worthy) Soviet leaders
Fortifications of a convent in Moscow. Seriously, don't mess with the nuns
Convent wall + still somewhat inappropriately dressed Diana
A convent garden, magnificent Russian architecture, and thou (if by "thou" you mean "smokehaze", and I do)
Bell tower in Russian baroque style
Onion domes
"Big chunk of building plus multiple domes" school of church architecture. There was a lot of this.
The sole remaining in situ momument to Lenin in Moscow
Garden of Forgotten Monuments - the (somewhat paint-spattered) evil guy from outside the Lubyanka
Ludicrously... ludicrous statue of Peter the Great. Taller than the Statue of Liberty, madder than a hatter
Ekaterina the Smug
How many Lenins can YOU fit in one photo?
Finally, Lenin has Stalin outnumbered
Garden of Monuments
Gorky Park: front gate
River, smoke haze, and the groom-to-be, Patrick
Reconstructed chapel tucked in one corner of Red Square
Kremlin gate, with the line for Lenin's tomb
The gate to Red Square that Uncle Joe knocked down to get his tanks through
Gum - major shopping centre and obvious thing to have opposite the Kremlin on Red Square
The Kremlin Wall on Red Square
The National History Museum on Red Square
Lenin's tomb
...and then St Basil's Cathedral loomed out of the mist. I mean, smoke haze
Basil's domes
More of Basil's domes
The Saviour Gate in the Kremlin wall (and its baby brother)
St Basil's, past the Place of Skulls
St Basil, plus statue
It was mesmerising, all right? We took a lot of photos of it
I mean, just look at it. Its sheer ridiculousness cannot be captured in one photo
Horsey fountain, on the edge of the Alexander Gardens, near the Okhotny Ryad shopping centre
Red Square by night
Gum by night
Basil by night (...and inexperience with the camera in these conditions)
What happens when you stay up until it's dark in Russia in summertime so you can take pretty pictures and then have to get up early to go to a wedding
The halfway stop on the bustrip to Suzdal
Look! It's us in Russia!
Father of the groom, and best friend of the mother of the groom
Angus (our fellow Australian and schoolfriend of the groom) and Patrick (the groom)
Angus's mother, and Alex (the groom's sister)
Alex and Jen (her friend, and workerbee in the Australian embassy in Moscow)
Demonstration of church density in Suzdal - there are two in this picture
Further demonstration of church density - three in this one, but one of those is the cathedral in the kremlin
Suzdal market square
Museum of Wooden Architecture - traditional summer church
Museum of Wooden Architecture - traditional winter church
Museum of Wooden Architecture - traditional house (of a well-off family)
House detail
Museum of Wooden Architecture
Domes in Suzdal
Monastery in Suzdal - don't mess with the monks either
Monastery gatehouse
Monastery gardens (we build those big walls to preserve these tranquil scenes...)
Monastery cathedral
Monastery cathedral belltower
Bells being rung
Inside the monastery cathedral
Cathedral floor mosaic
Cathedral chandalier
Country views from Suzdal's ancient earthern fortifications
Towards the town square
The Suzdal kremlin cathedral
Hulking architecture and domes: this is the theme
The floor tiles we didn't end up getting for our house (Suzdal cathedral)
Suzdal cathedral: iconostasis screen in full, er, glory
Iconostasis alter gates
The groom and family
The groom awaiting his bride outside the town hall (with leftovers from other celebrations)
Patrick demonstrates correct banya behaviour on Anthony
The boys get an answer wrong, and have to dance (again)
Patrick gets traditionally dolled up
Patrick and Yulia
Dinner
Inexplicable Roman grotto thing beside the Kremlin
Pillar of the great philosophers
Kremlin wall
You can never have too many pictures of domes
The first English embassy to Russia
Embassy, domes, belltower... overdose on history
Basil on a nicer day
Gum and Basil and entirely unexplained barricading off of Red Square
Saviour Gate
The Escher-esque interior of Gum
Gum: Second level
Gum: Skylight
Gum: Central court
Portrait of the holiday-makers reflecting
The rebuilt Cathedral of Christ the Saviour: external detail
The looming menace of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour
Anthony takes his ease amidst extraneous architecture cluttering up the surrounds
The Cathedral of Christ the Saviour
Frankly, it's a little unnecessary
Emperor Alexander II in the nearby garden
Rembrandt's Night Watch, now in 3D in the garden of the Pushkin Museum
The Lubyanka
Welcome to Novgorod: have some delicious fruit punch!
Novgorod Kremlin: reassuringly serious
The other side of Novgorod's Kremlin, where they keep the beach
View across the river to the remnants of the old Market
There's that school of architecture again
The density of churches was pretty high in Novgorod too
Nunnery gatehouse
More wooden architecture
Traditional church without smokehaze!
Monument to the Millennium of Russia (1862): solid bronze, mind-numbingly intricate
The Novgorod kremlin cathedral
Domes! They're just so pretty!
Back across the river to the Kremlin (and beach)
I have no idea either
It's all boat trips and funny hats (and massive historical architecture)
St Petersburg bridge adornments: lingering Communist paraphenalia in the sunset
The Venice of the North, now featuring the Answer to our Stomach Upsets
Some building called the Hermitage, whatever
Admiralty End
In St Petersburg, the Russians finally broke their dome habit (spire of the Peter and Paul Cathedral)
Peter and Paul Cathedral: Iconostasis goes rococo
The Hermitage gates
The Hermitage courtyard
Diana braces herself for the Peterhof (Summer Palace)
Peterhof: built by someone who thought Versailles had the right idea, but was too shy and retiring about it
More fountains! More statuary! More gold!
(Horrified) Detail
MORE, I say!
And then there was the whole acreage for those days when you just want to get away from it all
The vertigo-inducing St Petersburg metro escalators
"Central Park", which is a completely non-central island
The Suvarov Museum, which we're should would have been fascinating if any of it had been in English
Some guy the Russians think is sort of important
That guy's mate
They follow a different school of church architecture in St Petes
The church in the monastery of Alexander Nevsky
Peter and Paul across the water
St Petersburg mosque
Welcome back to civilisation: the view from our Amsterdam hotel balcony
We have about 95 pictures similar to this
Picking just a few was quite difficult
Mostly because Amsterdam really is extremely pretty every time you turn around
It took us a while to remember that a church could look like this
Part of one layer of historic fortications
Portrait of a content man
Portrait of an equally content if less somnolent woman
Utrecht canals: subtly different
Utrecht cathedral belltower
Utrecht cathedral: a familiar breed of hulking church architecture
Back to the neverending Amsterdam canal shots!
Multi-level bicycle parking lot. They're building another one because this isn't enough
The Waag (weighing house?)
The Old Church
Back entrance to the Amsterdam Museum
Rijksmuseum, featuring the reason Diana came home extremely soggy from this jaunt
I amsterdam outside the Rijksmuseum
The historic Hague
The less damp part of the historic Hague
Very historic (on our way to the Mauritshuis)
The pier at Scheveningen
The beach (somewhere under all that) at Scheveningen
Scheveningen
The gently canted Old Church of Delft
The extremely enscripted floor of the Old Church of Delft
The spire of the New Church
The Town Hall
New Church
Tomb of William the Silent in the New Church (in terms of large monuments to small men that we've seen, it barely rates, really)
Stained glass in the New Church
The highly optimistic and perenially closed (by the time we got to it) Palace of Peace in the Hague
Gates of the Palace of Peace
Australia in the rock garden of peace
Waiting for the tram in the Hague
Our garden house in Brugge
The garden, looking up to the main house
Our gate entrance
Bruges
We have about 95 pictures like this too
Because it is also extremely pretty
With all the canals and that
The Markt, featuring the Bellfort
The buildings fronting the Markt
Inexplicable baroquetry
The Basilica of the Holy Blood
Tollhouse on the Jan van Eyck plein
One of the least interesting Belgian beers we drank, but an amusingly packaged one
Belfort by night
Town hall by night
The most photographed spot in Bruges
Conquering ivy
Seriously, the place is pretty
Pretty and quite Gormenghastly in places
General pretty architecture
The unfortunately swaddled Church of Our Lady (the pointy building)
Canals. Pretty. You know the drill by now
Swans
The lockhouse
Stille Nacht: a Christmas beer from 1984 (one of the MORE interesting beers we drank)
Courtyard of the Belfort
Looking up the Belfort
The view from up there
Down into the Markt
The bells!
The pianola to ring the bells
From the mezzanine, down into the Markt
Down the alley towards the Jerusalem Church (featuring Diana wearing every layer she brought)
The windmill embankment circling town
The view back into the centre of town
One of the gatehouses
Taking advantage of the timely raising of the bridge
Another bridge-raising
Konigen Astrid park
The Minnewater park
The gatehouse of frequent movie entrances
The post office in full sun
The Belfort on a nice day
Actually, the church count in Bruges wasn't to be sneezed at either
