Day 44: Lithuania

Here are pictures of the money from Lithuania.  I don't know any of the people on the currencies.  Here is link to the wikipedia page: Money.  Presently 100 Litas = $37.45 or $1 = 2.67 Litas.  I remember that my shoes that I bought were 60 lita.

The coins used in Lithuania

Day 43: Riga

I went to the Ethnographic museum outside of Riga, Latvia.  An Ethnographic museum is an outside museum that chronicles buildings throughout a long period of time in a certain area.  This museum covered many centuries in the country of Riga.  I really enjoyed seeing these really old buildings.

This is what the underside of the roof looked like.
That is a lot of reeds!

There were a lot of buildings that looked similar to these ones.

An old windmill

Then here is a typical yard with the typical fence.  They were really cool.

Lamp post

A nice place to have a picnic.

A view through the woods to the lake.

Day 42: Moscow

There is this really cool monument/memorial that is called Victory Park or Парк Победы.  It stands in memory of World War II.  In Russian it is referred to as the Great Patriotic War.  It is hard to give perspective to the sheer height of that column but I think the picture does it a little.  Notice how small people look.

Here is close up of part of the column.  There was great detail all up and down the column.  In this segment you can see the "hero" cities of Leningrad (St Petersburg) and Moscow.

At the very top were these statues.  it looked really cool.  I am not sure of what it means but if I were to guess it would be an angel bringing peace and two babes trumpeting her arrival.

Then at the base you have a horseman who has cut up the snake that is Fascism.  There are a couple Nazi swastikas on the snake.

Day 41: Pushkin

Back in September of 2012, I went to the small town of Pushkin which is close to St Petersburg, Russia.  There are a couple palaces there.  This particular one belonged to Catherine the Great.  Unfortunately, we didn't go up these steps to go into the palace.  That would have been really cool.

Main Ballroom

But we did go inside and it was amazing!  I now have a better idea of what the phrase 'living in the lap of luxury' means.  It was huge with a lot of gold plating.  Everything was ornate also. From the ceiling to the floor and everything in between.

Ceiling

Wall

Floor

Day 40: Perm

While in Perm, Russia I went to a restaurant called Хутерок or something like that.  I ordered борщ and it came in this nice bowl thing.  It was really good.

Day 39: MTC

The MTC (Missionary Training Center) had a lot of really pretty flowers when I was there.  That is what happens when you are there over the summer.