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Breaking the Ice on the Moskva

Whilst Lou and did a boat cruise on the River Moskva in the summer (on Moscow day) on a small boat with about 20 other people, in the winter this isn’t possible, however there is a longer cruise on an icebreaker. These are larger glass enclosed boats, where you can have lunch or dinner depending on the time, and at least this winter the price was 1500 rubles (but we did have a group of 11, so might be more expensive for smaller group). So this Sunday Lou and I went with a bunch of friends on the afternoon cruise (2pm), and although I was a bit tired from the previous day’s activities after a couple of beers, and some ‘fresh’ air I felt great. Seeing the ice crack as the boat broke pushed through was interesting, and the seeing the buildings of Moscow from the river was interesting, especially on such a clear day with the sun low in the sky, it was also great to get some decent photos too.

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Feb 08, 2010 | Categories: All, Photography | Leave A Comment »

Moscow by night…….And Day

Last week we tried to have a wander around Moscow at night time to take some photos, but the temperature dropped rapidly as we approached the river, but luckily by this time we had already gone through Red Square to take a few photos, and so we made our way home via Ulitsa Varvarka. The only problem I had apart from the cold was there was a fair amount of snow in the air and a lot of lights lighting up the buildings, causing a haze on some of the long exposure night photos.

A few days later on Saturday 6th February we got up early and caught the metro to Kropotkinskaya to see the mising sun light up the Cathedral of Christ our Saviour from the footbridge over the river Moskva, from here over the river and a short walk down Bersenevskaya Naberezhnaya to the Bolshoy Kamenny Most and walked back across the river down by the river in front of the Kremlin walls then back up to Kitai Gorod to home. The sun had just risen and was low in sky, there were som e amazing colours which you can see from the photos.

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Feb 08, 2010 | Categories: All, Photography | Leave A Comment »

Walking in a winter wonderland – Serebryanyy Bor

The weekend after we returned to Moscow we went to visit a colleague of Lou’s and his Family who live in a reidential area of a park in Moscow – Serebryanyy Bor. By the time we were walking around the sun was dropping so there were some fantastic colours in the sky.

The park itself is on an island on the River Moscow to the west of the city, has a number of private residences, and a large number of small paths crossing through the forest. It seems like a popular location with cross-country skiers, we even saw an older lady being pulled along on her skis by a huge Mastiff dog, which had our friends’ rideback puppy cowering when it pulled its master over to greet the pup.

Another interesting site on the park was that all the waterways were frozen over with thick ice, but a ’swimming pool’ had been cut out of the ice, and as we were finishing looking around the area a guy was stripping off to go for a dip in the pool, madness!!

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Feb 08, 2010 | Categories: All, Life, Photography | 1 Comment »

The Finca Project – Part 1

20091230_Fortuna_023

My brother and his wife already have one great house in Fortuna, Murcia, Spain, but they have been on the look out for new possibilities for a while, and in the summer they bought a new place. It is an old wrecked Finca (Spanish Farm) with one other wrecked building on the grounds, and 9 acres of land, mostly with Olive and Almond trees.

The two times I was in Spain in December/January I visited the property, it has beautiful views as you can see below, in does have lots and lots of trees on the land at the moment, and has some great features in the old farmhouse. It has beautiful traditional Spanish beams, old vats used for olive and/or wine pressing, and some of the rooms make up a ‘cave-house’ that is typical of the area of Spain.

So I intend on recording the stages of renovation in pictures, even though it might take several years.

Click the pictures to see them in full.

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Jan 27, 2010 | Categories: All, Photography | Leave A Comment »

Where have I been? – Part 2 – UK and Spain

When I left Moscow I was only in the UK overnight down at my Mother-in-law’s house before leaving in the early hours to get to Bristol airport (the cheapest flight to Spain I could find by a long way). When I arrived my parents were there to meet me at the airport and my Dad seemed a lot better than when I left them only a few weeks earlier when he was still in hospital. I spent a week helping my mum out with things and mixing concrete and filling up some footings/foundation of the hen house they were building. My Dad would still have to go in hospital for a biopsy but not until the new year. Whilst I was out there I did get to see the Finca my brother has just bought too, a crumbling farmhouse that has a large part of it as ‘cave house’ dug right out of the surrounding ground, and it also comes with 9 acres of land mostly laid down with olive and almond trees at the moment, but more about that in separate post.

When I returned to the UK it had been hit with snow, a lot of it but luckily at that stage not near Bristol Airport, and not near to Lou’s mum’s place hardly. The next day I met Lou when she arrived back from Moscow, and we then spent just over a week at her Mum’s place for Christmas during which time I had many dramas with trying to get a new laptop that only eventually got resolved well into the New Year. Christmas was nice although we had a problem getting my new Russian visa, that again only got resolved after the Russian Christmas break (runs from 31st December until 10th January).

Lou and I headed off to Spain on 27th December and once again my Dad looked much better still, although he was still having breathing difficulties. We stayed with my parents until 2nd Jan, then we headed over to Alicante for a couple of days which was fantastic as we hadn’t had any time alone for 3 or 4 weeks at that point, and we love the city. the day after we got back from Alicante and the day before we were due to return to the UK my Dad lost his footing on some gravel and fell over, when he put his arm out to break his fall his dislocated his shoulder. He was then in Hospital for 4 days, so we rebooked our flights back to the UK until the Saturday, this also meant further delays with his biopsy, this is now booked in for sometime in the next few days. When we got back to the UK, the snow had fallen again, this time much heavier and more serious, and as I already said we had more visa issues, so we ended up being back in Portsmouth for another 10 days until my Birthday on 19th January when my passport and visa arrived back in the morning, so we booked the overnight flight and off we went that day.

I was going to do a longer series of posts about things that happened over the Christmas period to go with the photos I took, but I decided to keep it brief and stick witht he two posts.