Wednesday: St. Basil's Cathedral, Kva Kva Water Park

The banners and stars to commemorate the end of World War II (Victory Day, May 9) were all in place today. Yesterday when we had walked through, they had been in the process of putting the banners and stars up.




























































































We entered Red Square through the Resurrection Gate and walked across the square to St. Basil's Cathedral .































St. Basil's is composed of 9 separate domes, mostly onion shaped, each housing a separate chapel. Ivan the Terrible had it built in the mid 1500s to commemorate his victory over the Tatar Khan. The 9th dome was added in 1581 by his son to house the tomb of St. Basil, the Holy Fool. The original plan was to have 7 onion domes clustered around a central chapel. Each onion dome represented the saint on whose day he had won a battle.
















St. Basil's tomb was in the main chapel, the one used for church services. The chapel was in the process of being restored; many of the original layer could still be seen although the frescoes had been updated many times.
















Each chapel was decorated differently with both different icons and different styles.




































To get upstairs, we climbed a some narrow but steep curved staircase. Apparently at least twice Stalin had considered knocking down St. Basil's. On one occasion the architect told Stalin that he would slit his own throat before he would authorize the tearing down of St. Basil's. He spent five years in jail, but the cathedral wasn't knocked down. This cathedral wasn't as fancy as many of the others; it was cozier and more intimate. It's my favorite.






















In the afternoon, Monica and I helped drive kids to the Kva Kva Water Park to celebrate the birthday of Jessi's friend. The water park was a lot of fun with a wide variety of slides, a wave pool, and a grotto. I wasn't sure that I would like the slides, but they were a lot more fun than I thought they would be. The drive to the park was interesting because May 1 is a national holiday, and many people were leaving the city to go to their dachas, so the roads were horrendously crowded. We got back to the apartment by about 9:30 since the traffic was much better on the way home.