Tuesday, June 15, 2010

By Joan:

Today was a day in the Russian countryside. We left our “presidential suites” in Yaroslavl and spent the morning seeing yet more churches with onion domes. Along the way we saw Russian teenagers dressed in military garb and parading in front of the tomb of the Unknown Soldier ---although one young soldier was doing it while on his cell phone!

While visiting the church, we came across a Time Warner production of the anniversary of Yaroslavl ---1000 years old this year – and Donna and Joan managed to get on tape.  Martin, the host, wanted some real world people to interview and so of course we were happy to oblige. We now need to find out when it gets shown on TV!

From Yaroslavl we passed through Pylos, a small town on the Volga River. It is famous for a Russian landscape artist by the name of Isaac Levitan. They also produce beautiful lacquered boxes and cloisonned silver products, as well as handmade garments.

From there, another few hours to our stop for the evening, Suzdal.

Later, by Donna:

Our dinner in Suzdal was one of the highlights of our trip.  Our tour company arranged dinner in the home of Nikolai and Svetlana, who serve a fantastic homemade meal using many ingredients from their own garden.  There were homemade pickels with their own cucumbers, tomatoes that had been put up, boiled potatoes from their garden, beautiful salads, dolma with beet leaves, pork cutlets (I skipped that one personally, but hear it was good) and for dessert, homemade sweet buns with apple filling.  Best of all was having Nikolai tell us his story.  He had been a sailor for twenty years in Moldavia, but in 1991, at the collapse of the Soviet Union, his job went away, and he had to start over.  He and Svetlana sold an old car and used the money to buy their land, then built a house over two years pretty much with their own two hands.  They also started their magnificent vegetable garden, and they pretty much grow most of the food that they need. It was definitely a treat to meet them.
 
Our hotel here is my favorite so far.  It is a complex of buildings, kind of like a resort, that are quite elegant and old-world.  We have a two room suite, with plenty of space, and yet another view of a lovely Russian Orthodox church. (There are quite a few here, so I expect many rooms have a view of at leeat one.)  The curtains on the windows actually go the whole length of the window (which was not the case last night), and the quilt on the bed actually reaches across the whole bed (also untrue last night) and, miracle of miracles, there actually are two robes.  Only problem ... no internet in the room, so this post will need to wait until morning.