When I was a little girl, my very best friend, Bonnie Ann, lived just across the street. That’s me on the the left with my “pixie” haircut that my mother adored. I coveted Bonnie’s hair, because she could wear pigtails.

When I was seven, my brother was born, and I was sent to my aunt’s house for a week while my mother and baby Billy were in the hospital. When I came home, Bonnie’s family had moved. I was heartbroken. Bonnie told me months before she was moving, but I never believed she actually would.

She came back to visit a couple of times, but then I didn’t see her for decades.

Until recently. A couple of years ago, she tracked me down. We reconnected through a blog post I wrote for Doing Life Together. We friended each other on Facebook, and last spring she came to Phoenix to judge dog obedience trials, and we got to spend a couple of hours together.

Bonnie recently traveled to Russia for three weeks. She posted hundreds of photographs on Facebook, and gave me permission to share some of them with you. I picked out just a few, mostly highlighting Russian architecture and art.

Bonnie is in most of these pictures. It’s amazing, isn’t it, how much she looks like she did in the picture above, even though she’s only a year younger than me (er, twenty-nine…).

Peterhof – Tzar Peter the Great’s summer palace known as the ‘Russian Versailles’

A mosaic at the Old Stalingrad market

Mural on the ceiling of the railroad station in Volgograd, depicting the 1918 Russian Civil War.

Statues (click on the smaller images to enlarge and reveal captions):

‘The Motherland Calls’ – statue completed in 1967

Sphynx given to Peter the Great, in 1832, by Egypt.

Russian Museum of Art and statue of the poet, Pushkin

Statues of the architects of landmarks in a park in St. Petersburg

Catherine the Great

Vladimir the Great

All Saints Church, Volgograd

Catherine the Great’s Summer Palace:

The Throne Room

The Church of the Blood, St. Petersburg

Hermitage, Palace Square, St. Petersburg

Interior of St. Peter and Paul Church, St Petersburg

Bell tower of Our Lady of Vladimir Cathedral, St. Petersburg

The iconic St. Basil’s Cathedral, Moscow; Kremlin bell tower at left

Friendship of People Fountain in Moscow. The sixteen figures represents the 16 different cultures of the old Soviet Union. The statue over Bonnie’s right shoulder is special to Bonnie, because it represents the Ukraine, which is part of Bonnie’s heritage.

The Cathedrals of the Kremlin:

On left is the Archangle’s Cathedral – built 1505-1508. On the right is the Annunciation Cathedral – built 1484-1489.

Assumption Cathedral

The Interior of Assumption Cathedral

Changing of the guard at the Kremlin

The Tzar Bell

The Tzar Cannon (never fired)

Red Square; Kremlin on the left

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Russia’s largest shopping mall – GUM Department Store at the Red Square – built in the 1890’s.

The Vodka Museum. Pretty door.

Pretty staircase within Izmaylovo Kremlin

Stalin’s grave

Samovars for sale in a marketplace

Decorative eggs

Nesting Matryoshka dolls

Putin’s Palace, Moscow

View of the Kremlin and St. Basil from cruise ship on the Moskva River

The subway station in Moscow must be one of the cleanest and most beautiful in the world:

Traditional Russian folk art – Gzhel – on subway wall

Mosaic of Ukranian Soviet workers

Sickle and hammer from Soviet times

Yes, this is the subway.

A great big ARHtistic License thank you to Bonnie Lee for generously sharing her beautiful photographs.

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