The Golden Ring: Sergiev Posad

Visiting at least a couple of cities on the Golden Ring is recommended when you travel to Russia and spend more than a few days in Moscow. As such, I decided to sign up for a private tour by car of Sergiev Posad offered by Three Whales.

The main attraction when you visit Sergiev Posad is the Trinity Monastery of St. Sergius. It was founded by St. Sergius, who is one of the most venerated saints of the Russian Orthodox Church. As such, it makes perfect sense that this monastery serves as the church's spiritual centre.

Our timing wasn't very good though. We went there on May 1 which was the start of a 5-day holiday in Russia so hundreds (thousands?) of people who live in Moscow headed out to their dachas located outside the capital. This means that the traffic was really bad on our way to Sergiev Posad and it took us an extra hour or more to get there. Also, the toy museum in the monastery, which features a good collection of Matryoshka dolls, was closed due to the long holiday. Finally, the monastery would be celebrating the 700th anniversary of St. Sergius next year (he was born on May 14, 2014) so the Cathedral of the Assumption was closed to the public as it was being renovated. Nevertheless, we still got to see an enjoy other parts of the monastery.

I think there is a law in Russia that allows only city or region locals to provide guided tours. As such, our Three Whales tour guide Oleg endorsed us to our local tour guide (I am not quite sure what his name was, I thought I heard him say Rustan but my mom heard Rusdal or something like that). We kicked off the guided tour underneath the archway entrance which is decorated with murals of the life and eventual canonization of St. Sergius.

Our tour guide then took us to the Trinity Cathedral, which is a very important part of the monastery as St. Sergius' incorrupt relics are kept here. There was a bit of a long line to get in and photos are not allowed inside. Women also have to wear head scarves when they enter the cathedral.

To round out our tour, we went to the Refectory Church of St. Sergius. We actually visited Sergiev Posad before we went inside St. Basil's Cathedral so it was in our trip to the refectory that we got to take photos inside a Russian Orthodox Church for the first time. It was beautiful!

Inside the church was one of the most striking iconostases I got to see in Russia.

As this was already the official end of our tour, I asked our Three Whales guide Oleg for an extra 10 minutes so I could see and take photos of a few other sites in the monastery. One place I wanted to see was the Chapel over the well. The water from this spring can supposedly heal the sick and as such, many people were collecting water from this well.

Since the toy museum at the monastery was closed, Oleg drove us to a nearby exhibition of Matryoshka dolls after we left the monastery, although we had to pay an extra fee to enter as it was not covered in our tour. Visitors have to pay an extra fee to take photos of the displays and in this case, we chose not to take this option. The most impressive set had 47 dolls if I recall correctly. Wow!

There are plenty of souvenir shops outside the monastery and my mom ended up buying an apron in one of them. The souvenirs here are significantly cheaper than in Moscow. In fact, my mom saw some keychains that cost around 10 or 20 rubles only but since our tour was only for abour 5 hours including travel, we didn't really have enough time to look at and purchase souvenirs.

The Sergiev Posad tour offered by Three Whales provides an option to extend your stay (it costs an additional US$40 per extra hour) in case you want to spend more time here taking photos, going into the churches by yourself, and even purchasing souvenirs.

Next post: Vladimir and Suzdal.