Last summer we took the time to visit one of St. Petersburg's famous cathedrals. This impressive building is the Kazan Cathedral. It serves as the "mother cathedral" of the Russian Orthodox Church in St. Petersburg. Built in the early 1800s, the church is modeled after St. Peter's Basilica in Rome with two wings spreading north and south of the main cathedral. At the time it was constructed, the Russian Orthodox Church strongly disapproved of the idea that their cathedral would be built in the shape of the Catholic cathedral in Rome, but the Czar's courtiers applauded the design since it resembled a European structure. The cathedral was dedicated to "Our Lady of Kazan" the most venerated icon in Russia. When we visited the cathedral, the line leading up to the icon snaked around the interior of the church. We watched the people inch toward the icon. As their turn arrived, they climbed the one step to reach the icon and then would stop and pray
Living room in our new flat Now that we're pretty well settled in our flat in Riga, I thought I'd share a bit about our new living arrangements. We're in a much smaller (and cozier) building this time - a house with only four flats in it. The stone house was built in 1800s so has very thick walls. Hopefully, that will keep out the heat in the summer. As you can see by the picture on the left, our flat actually has two floors. The upper floor has our bedroom, bathroom and family room, so we have lots more space than any of our other apartments in Europe. We have lots of room for guests (hint). The lower level has the living room, office, kitchen and another bathroom. It's actually the closest to a US apartment that we've had to date. We have a dishwasher and garbage disposal in the kitchen. The laundry area in the basement has a washer and a DRYER!! First time in years that I have some of these luxuries. During the last week, I have found a couple qu
This week brings a big change for us. We are moving from our temporary apartment to our permanent flat across the city. That means packing everything we brought plus the extra food, etc we've accumulated since we arrived. At least, we don't have to get it into the six suitcases this time. But however many boxes and bags, we need to move this all ourselves by Friday morning. We are moving from a street called U Libenskeho pivovaru. When we first saw that name our first reaction was WHAT? How do you begin a name with the letter U all by itself. And why is the name so long? After we were here for a couple weeks, we found out that the letter U by itself is a preposition meaning "on, at, near". The area of Prague that we live in now is called Liben. Finally, we learned that the all important word beer is "pivo". So the name of our current street means "Near a brewery in Liben". We are moving into an apartment on Bubenecska. Bubenecska is located i
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