Calendar of events

This time our destination is Tula, an ancient Russian town famous for its guns, samovars and gingerbread cakes. But we began our trip in Yasnaya Polyana (Ясная Поляна) where Leo Tolstoy, a famous Russian writer, was born, lived and was buried.

The inscription on the stone says: «Here used to be the house where Leo Tolstoy was born». You can't see this house now because Tolstoy disassembled and sold it when he served in the army and spent the money to publish a magazine for soldiers

A small house where Tolstoy lived for about fifty years after returning to Yasnaya Polyana is now a museum. You can walk around his home, have a look at his study room and bedroom as well as check his library of 22,000 volumes. It was there that Tolstoy wrote his novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina.

After Yasnaya Polyana, we headed to Tula to visit the Tula Kremlin and see samovars in the local Samovar museum.

It is believed that if you make a wish and touch the wall of the Assumption Cathedral in the Tula Kremlin, your wish will come true

You may be wondering what exactly a samovar is? Basically, a samovar is a kettle. Before we stepped into the Age of Electricity, samovars were widely used in Russia for heating and boiling water. A traditional samovar consists of a large metal container with a faucet near the bottom and a metal pipe running vertically through the middle. The pipe is filled with wood/pine cones/coal to heat the water in the surrounding container

Although neither of us seemed to have bought a samovar this time, we stopped by in a small gingerbread shop to get a couple of traditional Russian sweet cakes - pryaniki- for the evening tea.