Where to Go for the Weekend from Moscow: Six Destinations Without a Plane

The weekend is about forty hours, of which it is reasonable to give six to the road. Anything beyond 300 kilometers turns into a trip for the sake of transit: arrived in the dark, back in the morning.

Within this circle, Moscow has surprisingly many options, and they differ in character—not "another old town," but truly about different things.

Kolomna: 100 kilometers, pastila and kremlin

The closest option and the most underrated. The Kolomna Kremlin of the 16th century has survived in fragments—seven towers out of seventeen,—but inside the walls lives an ordinary settlement with wooden houses and vegetable gardens, and this is rare.

A separate reason to go is the pastila museum: production was restored according to 19th-century documents, and this is not a souvenir shop, but a working factory with theatrical tea parties.

The road is an hour to an hour and a half via the Novoryazanskoye Highway or an hour and a half by commuter train from Kazansky Station.

Sergiev Posad: 70 kilometers

The Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius is the country's main monastery and the place people come here for. Walls, seven centuries of continuous life, a cathedral with an iconostasis for which Rublev painted "The Trinity".

This is a day trip: see the lavra, have lunch, and return. There is nowhere particular to stay overnight and no reason to.

Tula: 190 kilometers

A city with character and without museum sweetness. The Tula Kremlin is restored, inside—a square with craft rows; the Armament Museum in a helmet-shaped building has gathered four centuries of production history.

20 kilometers away is Yasnaya Polyana, Tolstoy's estate, where the house, park, and grave without a monument are preserved, as he requested.

Kaluga: 180 kilometers

The only space-themed destination on the list. The Museum of the History of Cosmonautics is the first museum of its kind in the world, opened with the participation of Korolev, and after expansion, one of the largest.

Nearby is the Tsiolkovsky House Museum, where he lived for 29 years and wrote his main works.

Vladimir and Suzdal: two cities in one weekend

180 kilometers to Vladimir, another 35 to Suzdal. This is the densest pair in the area: pre-Mongol architecture of the 12th century in Vladimir and an almost untouched small town in Suzdal.

Both can be done in two days if you stay overnight in Suzdal, rather than rushing back.

What to consider

Leaving Moscow on Friday evening costs two hours in traffic; it is wiser to leave early on Saturday or on Friday before lunch. Back on Sunday evening—the same thing in the opposite direction.

Hotels in Suzdal and Kolomna for the weekend are booked up in one to two weeks, earlier in summer. The commuter train is often faster than a car: to Tula the "Lastochka" takes two hours, to Vladimir—one and a half.