Last week flew by... I leave in 17 days! I'm definitely starting to feel a time crunch (especially when it comes to my bucket list). On Tuesday, I fed my kids Gouda cheese. This is how they felt about it.
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| Dyoma and Nika |
Thanksgiving Day proved to be more festive than I originally expected. Jenn made Indian headbands with her kids. Kseniya gave us each a "Thanksgiving gift" of Russian marshmallows. And the parents that spoke English surprised us by wishing us a "Happy Thanksgiving" as they picked up their kids. Danya looked like Peter Pan with his head band on. I tried getting a picture with him. The results....
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| Dyoma jumped in last minute. |
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I told him to "smile" so he showed
me he was smiling. Haha |
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| The "group" picture |
Friday morning we left bright and early on a bus to Vladimir, Russia. The bus ride was about 4 hours. Since we got to the bus super last minute, we got last choice on seats. Meaning we all ended up next to random Russian people. Luckily, the guy next to me just slept the whole time.
Side note. In Russia, the buses work two ways. You hop on and pay the bus driver directly (unassigned seats, first come first serve). Our bus from Moscow to Vladimir was this type. The other way is you buy a ticket at the bus station and give this to the bus driver (assigned seats). Remember this difference, because it's important to know later on in this post.
We arrived in Vladimir only to discover just how cold Russia can be. I was wearing an undershirt, long sleeve t shirt, a zip up jacket, a pull over sweater, a button up coat, and a zip up winter coat/wind breaker, 4 pairs of socks, snow boots, a beanie (with both hoods pulled up) and gloves. And with all that I was still cold. My group was in the same boat. After buying tickets for our bus to Suzdal (leaving at 6pm), we took refuge in a blini (Russian pancake) place. We all ordered some food because we were starving. I ordered blini with honey.
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You can't really tell, but they were
very generous with the honey :) |
After eating our fill of Russian deliciousness, we braved the cold again to start sight seeing. First stop, a nunnery.
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| The nunnery |
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| We made friends with this cute stray. |
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| The backside provided this incredible view |
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| The backside provided this incredible view |
After the nunnery, we hit up the "Golden Gates." This was the original entrance into Vladimir. There is now a roundabout encircling it.
Before venturing further, we took refuge in a coffee shop. Which naturally means I got hot chocolate! :) The coffee shop had WiFi so I was able to message my mom and let her know I had mad it safely this far.
Next was this church. I don't remember the name. We spent the majority of our time in the incredible winter wonderland surrounding it.
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| Do I look as cold as I felt? |
We moved on, seeing a couple more sights before heading to the bus station.
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| This was actually a planetarium |
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| I <3 Vladimir |
At 6pm, we took a bus to Suzdal. We slept on the way there (it got dark around 4). Groggy and disorientated, we stumbled off our bus. We bought tickets for the next day (back to Vladimir) before making the 5 minute walk to our lodgings for the night -- Vasilyevsky Monastery. Our instructions from Gulya were "Stand by the church and call Mihail. He will out and show you to your cell." We called him and he didn't answer. A random monk was walking around outside, so we asked him to go get Mihail. He came back after a few minutes and told us to wait. Mihail came a few minutes later (thank goodness, we were freezing). Our "cells" were more like a cabin.
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| Bedroom, Logan and I were roommates. |
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| Hallway, monks lived in the other rooms. |
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| Mother Mary watched over us as we slept. |
Due to the cold, we stayed in. Which means we had a couple hours to kill before heading to bed. AKA group bonding time! We all hung out in one of the rooms and just talked and laughed until 10:30 ish. I think I've said this before on my blog, but I have an awesome group. Not only do we get along well, but I feel like we are all genuinely friends with one another.
Saturday morning we woke to this view from our window.
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| Backside of the church |
Not wanting to brave the cold, we didn't leave until 10am. But the walk to the city center proved to be enjoyable. All the houses in Suzdal have these charming decorative windows.
The road from the monastery T-ed into the main street. There was a souvenir market, an eternal flame monument, and another blini place where we ate breakfast at.
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| Eternal Flame for the soldiers lost in WWII. |
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| Souvenir Market |
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| Twas a quaint little Russian restaurant. |
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Branching out slightly, I got two blini
with honey (pictured above) and two with jam. |
Suzdal is small town of about 13,000 people. There are 31 churches, 4 monasteries, and 2 convents (nunneries). Needless to say, we just wandered from church to church. My favorite was Uspenskaya Church. The prettiest Orthodox Cathedral I've seen was in Tallinn, Estonia. This was the prettiest Orthodox Church I've been in. Logan took pictures inside so I will get those from him at some point (but not in time to post, sorry!). Inside the church I bought a framed icon of St. George slaying the dragon. He is the patron saint of Moscow (and maybe all of Russia as well).
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| Uspenskaya Church. |
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| I am very excited to hang this up when I get home. |
The following pictures are documentation of the rest of our wanderings.
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We walked out onto the river!
Frozen solid, baby. |
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| Walking back to the bus station |
Our bus ride back to Vladimir was uneventful. However, the following two hours after arriving back in Vladimir more than made up for that. The Russian bus system can really suck sometimes. You remember how there's two types of buses? Well, we get to the bus station in Vladimir and try to buy tickets to Moscow. The lady said we buy our tickets on the bus (like how we got to Vladimir in the first place). We waited an hour and a half for the bus to show up.We walk out to the bus and try to get on. He says we need a ticket. So we walk back into the bus station to wait in line again to buy tickets (slightly annoyed that the lady did not sell us the tickets the first time). Once again, the lady says we have to buy the tickets on the bus. We go out to the bus and tell the bus driver this, and he insists that we buy them inside. Inside we go, but to a different ticket window. This lady also says we buy tickets on the bus. So here we are, standing in the cold outside the bus. Watching all these people with tickets (no idea where they bought them) get on the bus. Three Russian guys roughly our age were in the boat as us. They tried talking to the bus driver who blew them off. They got very upset. Jordan kindly translated all the not so nice words they exchanged with the bus driver before they stormed off. The bus proceeded to leave without us.
Feeling very frustrated, our hearts lifted slightly when another bus going to Moscow pulled in almost 5 minutes later. We immediately tried to get on and were told by the bus driver to buy our tickets inside. We explained to him our scenario with the last bus and how the ticket office was definitely not selling tickets to Moscow. He walked with us over to the employee entrance, where we waited outside for him to go check out the situation. He came back 5 minutes later, just as clueless as we were. At this point we were desperate. Desperate enough to try and bribe the bus driver. Jordan told him "our money is your money, if we get on that bus." He sat there for a second, looked at Alexa and Bailey's puppy dog faces and gestured for Jordan to come with him. They walked over to the bus where the bus driver told Jordan for us to wait around the corner and he would pick us up at 4:45. Laughing at how ridiculous our life was, we huddled in a group on the corner for about 25 minutes. 4:45 came and past, and no bus showed up. We were standing on hill overlooking the bus station, so we could see that he had not left yet. Getting antsy, we walked down to the base of the hill (direct line of sight from the bus). At 5:00, the bus finally pulled out. But when he came to our corner, he looked at us for a brief moment and kept driving. You can imagine the mood changed drastically. We were smart and had not paid him, but we had waited in the aching cold for nothing.
At this point we called Gulya. We didn't tell her how much we had been struggling. We simply said we could not find a bus to Moscow. Turns out, the normal Moscow buses park on the other side of the bus station. They are first come, first serve and leave once the bus is mostly filled. We got the last two rows on the bus leaving at 5:05pm. It was cheaper and nicer than the bribed bus. So we were content with our situation.
But the story does not end here. Half way between Vladimir and Moscow is a rest stop. We looked out the window only to discover that parked next to us was the bus driver who had abandoned us. Wanting to make a point without making a scene, we all climbed off the bus and stared at him as we walked in front of his bus to go inside. I was frustrated but not entirely upset with him. But several people were very upset with him. So while I just stared, the girls gave him death glares. We did this both entering the little convenience store, and walking back to the bus.
Logan and I came home to pizza and borsch. Ria (our babushka) is a wonderful cook. All in all, it was a great weekend in the countryside. I still can't believe that tomorrow is December. Let the countdown begin!
-Paul
