For this week’s Wacky Wednesday, consider the general likelihood that you might one day be drinking a good old Coca-Cola in front of the gates at Catherine Palace in Pushkin, Russia. Then dream big. —Lori Tripoli
Tag: Russia
Moscow Now
Any number of people, knowing that I’ve visited Russia, say to me, “I’d never go there now.” I can’t help but think, why not? Well, there’s that crisis in Ukraine, of course. Yet most people I know wouldn’t be heading to Kiev, they’d be going to St. Petersburg to see the Hermitage and to Moscow…
Don’t Let Olympics Coverage Deter You from Russia
I had no idea what a huge deal a snowflake’s refusal to morph into an Olympic ring could be until the global coverage of the snafu at Friday’s opening. That such a commotion was made about a snowflake seems to be a part of a pattern of negative coverage of sports events in Sochi. I’ve…
10 Degrees in New York and Wishing I Were in Russia
Living on a lake in a small town in New York, I can’t help but think about winter and warmth and living through the cold. When it’s 10 degrees and even my wood floors are cold, I long for an old country house in Kizhi that I saw when visiting the Church of the Transfiguration,…
Tis the Season for Reflection
Another year, not enough travel! I’d hit the road all the time if my checkbook would let me. But I am grateful for all of the places I have been so far and to have goals about where I want to go in the future. For the present, I am grateful to be able to…
Visit Versailles via ‘Farewell, My Queen’
Does anyone understand Marie Antoinette? How someone, anyone, the queen of France could be so entirely oblivious about what was going on all around her entirely befuddles me. Every time I make excuses for her—she was too young for her role, her husband was supposed to be in charge—I can’t help but think of another…
Watch the Latest Anna Karenina for the Mood, Not the Views
The 2012 version of Anna Karenina, starring Keira Knightley and Jude Law as Anna and Karenin, features plenty of Russian darkness and bad behavior but not as many images of Russia as I would have liked. For those planning to visit Russia, the film is still worth a watch; what it lacks in actual Russian…
The Oblivious Queens of Versailles
Visiting Versailles, the palace of French kings, and the Conciergerie, the prison where Queen Marie Antoinette spent her last days, one can’t help but wonder, How could it possibly have ended like this? Elements of the story do make sense: the queen seemed largely unschooled, her spouse weak, her home far removed from any squalor….
What I Learned at Doctor Zhivago’s Revolution
It took me a half a dozen tries to get all the way through the three-hour-long 1965 film Doctor Zhivago, a love story set amid the backdrop of the Russian revolution but filmed elsewhere. Starring Omar Sharif as a doctor-poet, and Julie Christie as an unconvincing 17-year-old raped by her mother’s love interest, a member…