Ideas of things to do and places to visit on a family trip to Rostov-on-Don, Russia

01.09.2015 4089


What’s to best place to kick back and relax with your family in Rostov? Our review covers museums, theaters, parks and ecology trails, excavations from the ancient city, Kidburg children’s careers town, and water parks in Rostov-on-Don where you can take your kids. 


 

 

Fun Activities for Kids in Rostov-on-Don 

 

Kidburg is a children’s careers town that opened in the beginning of 2013 in Rostov. At the entrance, each child between the age of 4 and 14 receives a “citizen’s passport” and “profi”, the local currency, which can be spent on entertainment or career training. Children may become doctors, farmers, designers, policemen, drivers, or reporters –they can switch the activity at any moment. For rug rats between the age of one and a half and four years old, there are three developmental activity zones open: Art School, Soft Museum, and Farm. 

 

In GoodZone family entertainment center, kids can play bowling: they put up special bumpers for them. In the restaurant is a kids menu and on the weekend they hold kids parties. 

 

 

Rostov-on-Don Museums for Kids 

 

You can see festive Cossack outfits and the gold “Treasures of the Rostov-on-Don Barrows” in The Rostov-on-Don Natural History Museum. They conduct interactive tours for kids where they tell them about famous people that lived in Rostov-on-Don. They also tell them about cab driver professions, lamp lighters, and chimney sweepers. Then, they go on to show them what kinds of dishes were used in the 20th century as well as what time of cannons were shot during war. Also open in the same building is The Rostov-on-Don Natural History Museum with a collection of fossils and a diorama “Animals and Birds at Home”.  

 

 

A branch of the natural history museum, archeological open-air museum Tanais is located out of town, 30 km from Rostov. The museum is open at the location where ancient excavations were conducted of the ancient city of Tanais. Open air tours are held through the old city, fortress remains, royal barrows, and the “stone” beam land plot as well as a Poet Tower reconstructed there, the residences of ancient Tanaits, and a sanctuary of cumans that come came after them. For kids and adults, they organize trainings for certain trades and interactive history lessons.    

 

If the weather is fair, you can go on a trip to The Railroad Technology Museum in open air. At Gnilovskaya Station there is over 50 steam and heat trains, passenger trains, and freight trains. There is even an active semaphore and an old hoisting crane. You can go inside the cabins and the salons. Sometimes you can even go for a ride in the car of an old train on the retro tour excursions.

 

 

You can visit a cosmonautic technology and ammunition museum in The Space Museum. They have brought in a real launching capsule, space suits, and things the cosmonauts wear, while they’re training before flight. In the museum, you can have a look in a log book and found out how they fix breaks in a space ship as well as what dishes go into each space man’s rations. Also on the tours, they show a movie about life in orbit and even organize virtual “space flights”.  

 

In The Doll Gallery, a collection of designer dolls is presented in costumes from different countries of the world. There they hold temporary and permanent exhibitions, for example dolls in circus costumes or dolls made by children’s photographs. Some dolls can be bought and they even hold trainings in the museum on how to make plastic and hinged dolls. 

 

Old sewer manholes, water plants, pumps, and fire tools are assembled in The Water Piping Museum of Rostov-on-Don. Operating in the museum is a Kids Ecological Center with interactive sessions, where you visit the Central Water Piping Lab, airing stations, and purifications works.   

 

 

In The Innovations Museum of the chemical department of SFedU are materials presented that involve inventions and technical novelties from various time periods. For example, you can see a blow lamp there, an oil lamp, a kerosene lamp, and an old scale as well as a collection of minerals and a display case with soviet toys, such as tin soldiers, dolls, and Christmas tree decorations. Visiting The Innovations Museum is absolutely free.   

 

Rostov-on-Don Theaters for the Kids and the Family 

 

In the Youth Theater of Rostov-on-Don, they set up school program performances. You can take your preschooler and go watch “Uncle Rimus’ Tales” or “Treasure Island”. For a little bit older kids, they have “Evenings on the Farm Yonder by the Dikanka”, “Hamlet”, or “Olesya” based on the story of Kuprin. 

 

 

You can watch productions “Cherry Garden”, “Mind Grief”, “Romeo and Juliet”, and “The Three Musketeers” in The Drama Theater in the Name of Gorky. For children there, they set up fairy tales about Aladdin, Buratino, The Capricious Princess, and Morozko. 

 

In The Rostov-on-Don Puppet Theater, they have performances based on Russian and foreign tales about Chipollino, The Know-Nothing, The Thumbelina, Cinderella, Bambi, Gulliver, and Horton The Little Elephant. As of March 2013, the puppet theater will be putting on performance “Funny Punch”, recreated based on the script of the national punch theater of the past century.   

 

They have performances by kids also in The Music Theater of Rostov-on-Don. For kids, they put on productions of tales such as Mogley, The Little Mermaid, Leo the Cat, The Sturdy Tin Soldier, and you can take your whole family to the ballet Sleeping Beauty or Snow White and The Seven Dwarves. 

 

Outdoor and Entertainment Parks in Rostov-on-Don 

 

On the City Embankment on the left shore of the Don River, they have all their holiday walks. There you can take a picture with the Native of Rostov-on-Don statue, buy souvenirs, hang out at the café, or have a ride on various attractions or the promenade boat

 

 

There are playgrounds and merry-go-rounds in Friendship Park with monuments of the brother cities of Rostov-on-Don. In the park is a path down to a reservoir, where you can go feed some ducks. Also next to the park is Little Octopus Complex, where you can have a swim in the summer in an open air pool and in the winter time –go ice-skating. 

 

You can ride some more attractions in Maksim Gorky Park. In the summer there, they lay out large flower beds and organize festivals, dancing competitions, and concerts at kiosks. 

 

 

The characters of the Know-Nothing stories “live” in Fairy Tale Park. Situated between the story characters are attractions and kids playgrounds, where you can ride go carts in the summer and visit the Dolphin Aquarium year round.

 

In the SFedU Botanical Garden, they hold tours with visits to the forbidden plains, the Sarovsky Seraphim Spring, insect exhibitions, and green houses with tropical plants. Also on the Botanical Garden premises, they hold a two-kilometer ecological trail with routs of various difficulty levels. 

 

During holidays in Ostrovsky Park, they have entertaining programs and on the weekends, they have creative trainings. During the warm season, there are kids attractions working in the park and you can rent bikes, roller skates, and kid cars as well as rides on horses or the Kids Railroad.

 

They have attractions for the whole city in Ice City skating rink in Revolution Park. On the fountain square they celebrate all of the city holidays and they also have a pool with water attractions and a water feeder with birds, a soccer field, tennis courts, and paintball.

 

 

The Kids Railroad (KRR) in Rostov-on-Don

 

The KRR of Rostov-on-Don is run around Ostrovsky Park. Moving on a track almost 4 kilometers long with 9 stop lights, the train crosses a little bridge and 4 crossroads. The train travels between three stations: Victory, Sun, and Vitya Chereevichkin Platform. You can ride the kids railroad from June to November. To find out about the schedule, call +7 (863) 251-27-04.

 

Zoos, The Dolphin Aquarium in Rostov-on-Don 

 

You can get inside The Rostov-on-Don Zoo any day of the week. Inhabiting it are over 5000 animals, birds, and fish. There you can see a giraffe, elephants, crocodiles, a kangaroo, a pygmy hippo, monkeys, tigers, and lions. Living in the aquarium are fish of the Don and exotic fish and in the reptile house are snakes and turtles. Schoolchildren between the 5th and 10th grade are accepted into the Junior Zoologist community, where they hold tours around the zoo and summer trips out of town. 

 

 

On Theater Square is The Petting Zoo. The first floor is occupied by pets and birds like: sheep, goats, piglets, pigeons, and chicks as well as an emu ostrich neighboring them. Spread throughout the second floor is a “jungle” with a crocodile, frogs, turtles, snakes, spiders, and dog fruit bats. During the tour, The Petting Zoo employees will tell you about their caretakers and of course allow you to feed and pet the animals.  

 

The Dolphin Aquarium of Rostov-on-Don is open year round. Every day they present several dolphin shows of Timothy and Cassandra the dolphins, Steven the white whale, and Ricky the stingray. After the show, you can take pictures with the performers and the even hold sessions where you can swim with the dolphins. For kids under 5 years old, entrance to the show is free if they are held by their parents. 

 

Water Parks in Rostov-on-Don 

 

In Rostov-on-Don in the summer time, you can go check out open air water park Little Octopus. There you can go down 8 different slides and swim in 7 different pools. For small children there is a shallow pool with a depth of 0.3 m with a play station in the very center. As for the whole family, you can all swim in the wave pool or Dream Lake. In Little Octopus, there is a sauna, a café, “land” attractions and you can also play volleyball in the water. 

 

 

Water Land water park is located on Green Island. You can go swimming in the pool and go down 4 different slides during the warm season: only part of the water park is covered. For kids there is a little town with water slides, a labyrinth with a waterless pool, and a trampoline. As for a little bit older kids, they can ride along with adults. There is no separate kids pool in Water Land, but there is a café and a fun zone with a lounge. 

 

Photo by: kidsreview.ru, wikipedia.org, facebook.com/Ростовский-областной-академический-молодёжный-театр, zoopark-rostov.ru


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