So, back on the road! I’m on my way to Seliger!
Visited here for the first time this summer and truly fell in love with this beautiful, huge lake filled with love and blessings. With boats, boats and motor ships passing through it, with islands and islets scattered inside it, on which there are springs, lakes and inside them again islands, churches and chapels, pine trees, soft sand, which is so pleasant to walk on, moss creeping a soft carpet that you want to stroke with your hands and lie on it. Blueberries and raspberries, fish and crayfish, water lilies and reeds, campfires burning at night.
I left filled, in great gratitude to everything that was opened, and with deep confidence that I would return soon. I’m coming back. Now I really want to feel the winter Seliger, with its ringing silence, snow crunching underfoot, to feel its strength and power under the covers of ice.
It takes about 5 hours to go from Moscow to Seliger, but since I have enough time, and I want to enjoy my trip in Griboyedov’s way, “with feeling, with sense, with arrangement”, I will stay for a couple of nights at the Panorama Hotel in Tver, just halfway to your destination.
This is a huge business center: a restaurant, a hotel, a cinema, a hookah bar and much more is hidden on its 24 floors. The Panorama Hotel itself is located on the 17th-19th floors of the Tver business center. Excellent sun-drenched rooms of different categories (I recommend, of course, the suite or the executive suite). Snow-white linen, stunning views from the windows.
A separate bonus of this business center is the only observation deck in Tver at a height of 77 meters. The panorama of Tver extends into the distance for many kilometers. From the observation deck of the skyscraper, you can see the architectural ensembles of historical buildings and the domes of temples from an unusual angle.
The heart of this huge complex is located on the 22nd floor: a restaurant with several halls, a warm atmosphere and stunning views from the panoramic windows. It is especially pleasant to have breakfast here, admire Tver from a bird’s eye view. The menu features international cuisine. Exquisite taste and impeccable presentation.
For those who prefer to relax in a relaxed atmosphere, there is a VIP room for up to 16 people – cozy, comfortable, amazing splendor: carved furniture and a fireplace seem to be transferred to the times of Tsarist Russia and make you feel like a guest at a royal dinner. Or even the owner?
After a delicious dinner, you can go to a modern cinema, which is on the second floor of the complex (one evening I did just that), or you can take a walk around Tver.
It’s cozy in Tver. Wooden huts side by side with trendy townhouses. Mosque – with a Catholic cathedral and a synagogue. Pushkin Street – with the Proletarka Yard Street. In the Travel Palace, which Alexander the First presented to his sister Ekaterina Pavlovna (the granddaughter of Catherine the Second, the wife of the Prince of Oldenburg and the “demigoddess of Tver,” as Karamzin called her), there is the richest collection of Russian paintings from Aivazovsky, Ge and Shishkin to Levitan and the Wanderers. The wide streets with beautiful buildings with lacy stucco and bas-reliefs are reminiscent of St. Petersburg streets. People are walking along the banks of the Volga and humming something under their breath. They are here – as if a little from the past, as if time is frozen here. On Trekhsvyatskaya Street, two foreign students are talking to each other in broken Russian and, as they say goodbye, they shake each other’s left hands. Afanasy Nikitin silently looks at all this. And I look out of the windows of the Panorama Hotel, write my poems and have a very tasty dinner with the best (definitely!) view of the city.
The next day I set off again to meet Seliger. The Seliger Palace Hotel, where I stayed back in the summer, is located in the village of Novye Eltsy, a 10-minute walk from the lake. Two centuries ago, noblemen walked along the shady alleys on the territory of the hotel, and the hotel itself is an architectural monument, formerly the Tolstoy estate.
The history of the hotel begins in the 18th century, when the landowners Tolstoy, the owners of the Novye Eltsy and Bukhvostovo estates, a distant branch of the Tolstoy family, founded their estate here. They trace their family tree, like the counts, to the legendary Indres, who left for the city of Chernihiv from the German lands (at that time they were called Tsesar lands) in 1353. With two sons and allegedly with a retinue of three thousand people. Indres was baptized and was named at baptism Leontius. One of the descendants of Indres received the nickname Tolstoy from the Great Moscow Prince Vasily the Dark, from whom the numerous count and noble surname Tolstoy went in Russia.
The legacy of the Tolstoys has been restored today; comfortable rooms of various categories and restaurants are located in the main building. The three-story building of the “Manor” has 50 rooms, designed for a different number of guests, from one to four, and of different sizes – from compact one-room to deluxe rooms. The reception building houses a classical-style ballroom.
The territory of the estate is 42 hectares of well-groomed and protected landscape on the peninsula with two well-maintained beaches, marinas for water transport, illuminated alleys and areas for picnics and outdoor activities.
For outdoor enthusiasts, there is a tennis court on site (in winter it turns into a skating rink), rental of sports equipment for winter and summer sports, a bathhouse, a sauna, a gym, a beauty salon, and massage. For guests with children there is a children’s room with a nanny, a library, animation for children of all ages. And, of course, 2 restaurants and bars: the Tolstoy restaurant with three buffet meals a day, the Usadba restaurant with a la carte menu and service, the Green Hills bar with breathtaking views of the lake and forest, as well as a summer cafe and bar “Prichal” on the shore of a quiet bay.
And, of course, driving around the Seliger neighborhood is a real pleasure. Not far away is the active male monastery “Nilova Pustyn”, the source of the Volga, the healing “Holy Okovets Spring” and the wooden temple of the 17th century “Shirkov Pogost” built without a single nail. I also definitely recommend a trip to the islands. In the summer it is, of course, a completely different story, but the winter fairy tale has its own charm. In general, for those who are imbued with this land, love can happen to her for a long time. Like mine.
Vivat, Seliger! Bow to you low!
