Whether you love International Women's Day or loathe the overpriced flowers and candy, a very good way to spend this holiday is outdoors in one of Moscow's many parks. The parks are hosting all kinds of women-centered events, and many will be celebrating women, spring, music and Moscow with outdoor photo exhibitions. The paths should be shoveled or dusted with sand by Tuesday. Why not go to the park of your choice, check out the photos, and stay to enjoy late-winter, early-spring Moscow weather?
The Hermitage Garden in the city center will have an exhibition of images of women in Russian art set up by the Tretyakov Gallery. You can work on your own image, too, with specialists to help you color your hair — think: pink streaks — and have your photo taken against the background of Paris or a Chinese garden.
At Vorontsovsky Park, every woman will be presented with a tulip and serenaded. Everyone is welcome to see the Multi-Media Art Museum's photo exhibition called "USSR: Women in Sports."
Moscow in the 1960s can be relived through a photo exhibition at Fili Park.
For you literary types, Perovsky Park is hosting an exhibition by the Arzamas Academy on women poets: 19 famous poets, from Sapho to Maria Shkapskaya, with snippets of poetry along with their images. And Krasnaya Presnya Park has a photo exhibition called "Mama Can Do it All," about women balancing (ha!) careers and families.
More into nature? Head over to Kuzminki or Goncharovsky Park to see photos of spring springing all over Russia. Kuzminki will also have special areas to help kids create cards for the favorite women in their lives.
If you're a man, in good shape, and competitive, head over to Fili at noon and run a two-kilometer race holding a bouquet of tulips. And then go check out photos from TASS photographers of Moscow in the 1960s.
Into jazz or Hungary? Gorky Park has three photo exhibitions, one of jazz musicians and two from the Hungarian Cultural Center. If you're more into women and love, check out their excursion called "Fourteen Stories About Love" that will be held at 12.30 p.m. (and cost 100 rubles).
Across the street Muzeon is hosting an exhibition of reproductions of some great works of art of modern and contemporary Russian artists and offering an excursion about images of women in monumental sculpture at 1 p.m. That requires advance registration at muzeon.ru.
For more information about these and other events in Moscow's parks, see mosgor-park.ru.
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