Vladimir and Suzdal

This is the story of our long weekend adventure to Moscow's Golden ring, a couple weeks ago.  Well, it was really more of a relaxing weekend getaway than an adventure, but that's what we needed.  The Golden Ring is a group of historic cities outside of Moscow that feature a lot of historical buildings, some dating back nearly 1,000 years.  

We launched our excursion on the high-speed train from Moscow, which we almost missed because there were no signs saying that we had to go through a separate building to board the train on a raised section of the platform.  We arrived in Vladimir after an hour and a half trip (the regular train takes almost 4 hours), most of which involved our chasing Aiden up and down the aisle of the train.  From the train station we had to lug our bags and Aiden up a huge flight of stairs to find our hotel. 

When we checked in, we learned that our room was in a separate building, with no air conditioning and no breakfast, which was not the impression I got from the website. Our trip took place during a particularly hot bit of weather, but we had to decide between letting the room become stiflingly hot, or opening the window to catch the nascent breeze and listening to the squeaky gate every time a car pulled into the lot outside.  Fortunately, we were only staying one night. 

Before we knew it, it was morning and I went down to a convenience store to grab some breakfast and we packed up and headed out for a day of sightseeing.  Our first stop was a bus trip to the nearby town of Bogolyubovo to see an ancient church in the middle of a field.  There were no signs, so we had to sort of ask our way there.  The cat in the picture below was slightly more helpful in pointing the way than the surly babushkas we asked. 

However, after climbing a four story overpass to cross a railroad (the elevator wasn't working), we passed through a small copse of trees and saw the church in the distance.

The Church of the Intercession on the Nerl dates back to the middle of the 12th century and sits on a little rise above a pond.  Apparently, every spring, the pond floods and the church looks like it's floating on the water. We didn't get to see that particular phenomenon, but it was still a beautiful place. 

The church was quite different from most we had seen, particularly because of the strange carvings on the outside.

Bogolyubovo is also home to a monastery that dates back to the 12th or 13th century.  It was also very beautiful, but the nuns were rather rude.  When I asked one politely about the age of a mural on one of the buildings, she said "It's old" and hurried off before I could say anything else.

Back in Vladimir, we had a wonderful lunch of assorted blinis and went out for more sightseeing.  Vladimir dates back as far as the 10th century by some accounts, but was clearly an established settlement by the 11th. We started at the golden gate, which is pretty much all that remains of the city walls dating back to the 12th century. Vladimir was a major political and religious center until the Mongols sacked it in the 13th century, after which it never fully recovered.

From there, Stephanie took Aiden to a nice park and I ran down the hill to the bus station to get tickets for our onward travel to Suzdal.  When I had huffed and puffed back up the hill, we toured the Cathedral of St. Demitrius and the Cathedral of the Assumption.  Both date back to the 12th century, but are more recent than the Church on the Nerl.  St. Demetrius has a similar style, but with many more carvings.

The Cathedral of the Assumption is much more like what we're used to seeing in Russian Orthodox Churches, and actually, one of the cathedrals in the Kremlin was modeled after it several centuries later.

So after our whirlwind tour of Vladimir, we all got on the bus and headed for more relaxing environs in the village of Suzdal. The bus ride was only about 45 minutes, but we happened to be on the sunny side, so we ended up huddled under one of Aiden's blankets like a bunch of vampires trying not to be incinerated. When we got to the Suzdal bus station there was some confusion because the bus driver tried to get us to stay on the bus to go into the town center, but I was pretty sure that our host was going to pick us up there.  Luckily I followed my instinct and she was there.

She drove us through town and to her house, a traditional Russian cottage where we would be staying for the next four days.  It was a beautiful little house with a yard bursting with flowers - such a nice change from the bustle of Moscow. Our host family took wonderful care of us, feeding us huge breakfasts every morning and giving us advice on sightseeing.  Suzdal is a town of about 11,000 people, but it has five monasteries and 32 churches.  It's only about 2 kilometers from end to end, so it was easily walking to all of the major sights. 

We got settled into our room and went a few yards down the street to a little restaurant for dinner and then got a good nights sleep to recover from our time in Vladimir.  The next morning we headed into town to see the Cathedral of the nativity, but stopped at an overlook to get some views of the city. It was so green and peaceful except for the...

Old drunk (probably) man playing his accordion and singing at the top of his lungs.  It was sort of obnoxious on the street level, but from the overlook it provided some nice background music for a little video.

The Cathedral of the Nativity is one of the oldest churches in Suzdal (13th century) and  is inside the Kremlin, which contained the original village. Inside the church were frescoes from the 13th through the 17th centuries.

After visiting the cathedral, we crossed the river on a little wooden bridge to go to the wooden structure museum.

The museum incorporates real wooden structures from the 17th and 18th centuries from the Vladimir region. It included churches, homes, and windmills.  Aiden had a really good time walking around the grounds and getting filthy playing in the dirt.

I found one structure, akin to a giant hamster wheel, particularly interesting. Apparently villagers would actually walk in the wheel to draw large buckets of water up from the well, pretty cool. I would have loved to try it.

Stephanie noticed a sign pointing to an additional exhibit in an old stone house.  On the first level, there was a period example of a small tavern or traktir, and upstairs there was a replica of a merchant family's home.  It was really interesting to see how people might have lived.

By the time we finished with the museum, we were all quite hungry and thirsty, so we headed back into town for lunch.  One of the highlights was having the famous white mushrooms, which aren't like the ones in the store.  They're huge mushrooms that grow in the forests of Russia and are a culturally important dish.  They were delicious, with a texture similar to fresh oysters.  To go along with it, we sampled a tasting menu of the local honey wine, medovukha.  To be honest, despite different additions like pepper, hops, mint, and other spices, they all tasted fairly similar, but I was feeling pleasantly buzzed by the end of our meal.

The biggest challenge throughout the trip was getting Aiden to eat.  We brought a small amount of baby food with us, but worked pretty hard to find things for him to eat on the menus.  Luckily, he likes potatoes and the Russians are experts with potatoes, so we used that as a starting point, and got him to eat fairly well.

In the evening, we mostly just enjoyed walking around the neighborhoods and enjoying the different designs on the traditional houses. The weather cooled off fairly nicely so it was very pleasant and the area was quiet enough that we could let Aiden out to walk around a bit.

Better yet was the discovery that the restaurant near our B&B had a nice cool basement room, where we could let Aiden run free while we ate.  It made for much more enjoyable dinners than keeping him strapped in his stroller. High chairs don't seem to have caught on yet in Suzdal.

I also discovered a taste for cured pig lard, which went extremely well with a cool pitcher of medovukha, although I learned the hard way that being a parent has made me something of a lightweight. A liter of honey mead was a bit much.  Luckily, we only had to walk a few meters to get home.

The next day we headed down the street (literally) to the Pokrovsky monastery.  It was so neat to just be able to walk out the door and see such historic sights.

From there we wandered around to the Nevsky Cathedral, named for Alexander Nevsky, a Grand Prince of Vladimir in the 13th century who was famous for his negotiations with the Mongol oppressors and was made a saint shortly after his death.  Again, it's just incredible to be able to walk around this sort of history.

We made our way from there along a bluff above the river, with old wooden houses and great views of the Pokrovsky Monastery below...

...and eventually reaching the impressive Spaso-Euthimiev Monastery, which dates back to the 14th century.

While there we were treated to a ringing of the bells - and later encountered a little girl who was very taken with Aiden and said that her father is the guy who rings the bells.  Whether or not that was true, it was interesting to see how one man rings all those different bells through a system of ropes and pulleys.

Afterwards, I went inside the main cathedral, which was beautifully decorated with 16th frescoes painted by the greatest master artists of the time, which are incredibly well preserved.  Stephanie was a little churched out at that point and didn't go in, but armed as always with my camera, I was able to bring the frescoes to her later.

While there, I was especially lucky to catch a brief musical performance by some of the orthodox priests...

The next day started out rainy, so we spent the whole morning just relaxing in our room and playing with Aiden. Our host had made us a huge stack of blini, so we were stuffed anyway and wouldn't have been much for walking around.  It was one of the best parts of the whole trip. By the time Aiden woke up from his nap, the skies had cleared and we went into town to look around and do some shopping.  Stephanie found a neat little tourist trap, with entertainment and good places for pictures.

While browsing the offerings of an antique dealer, I found this lacquered print of a Palekh painting (a style that originated in the 1920's during the Soviet period).  The seller and our host agreed that it depicts a scene from one of Pushkin's fairy tales, but weren't sure which one.  I haven't been able to figure it out either.  Regardless, for $7, I think it was quite a find.

After that, we stopped at the Rizopolozhensky Monastery.  The monastery dates back to the 13th century, but the actual buildings are more recent, from the 15th century - funny how 'more recent' can still be one hundred years before the first European settlements in North America.

This monastery isn't one of the  better kept examples in Suzdal, but it did have a very strange icon that shows  a rather sinister expression on Mary's face.  I wasn't able to find out anything more about it, but it was different from anything else I had seen.

We were going to have dinner at a place in town, recommended by our host.  But when we went in, they were incredibly rude, even by Russian standards. They didn't even acknowledge us when we came in, and when we finally got seated, they sort of threw the menus at us. So we just got up and left and went back to have some more white mushrooms at the place we had gone before. As we were heading back, the clouds started to roll in and we got back just before a big storm rolled through.

But as the storm passed, everything was cast in a very eerie red light as the sun set, so we went out to have a look around.  It was almost like being on another planet.

On our last morning, we followed a little path along the river, passing a car where two people seemed to be in the middle of doing something I was glad Aiden's stroller was too short to allow him to see. Luckily, we were moving fast enough that we passed before Stephanie or I had to see too much.  We aren't prudes, but it was 10 o'clock in the morning on a Monday - not exactly what we were expecting to encounter.

Anyway, we crossed the river on a little wooden bridge, shortly after passing the vehicle of iniquities. We made our way up to a church that looked interesting from across the river, but appeared to be abandoned.  It was still interesting.

On the way into town, we walked along a bluff with some great views over the lower village and found a nice restaurant with quite outdoor seating for our last meal in Suzdal.

We made one more stop at the main square and trading arcades. but weren't really impressed with the things they were selling.  There were some baskets that Stephanie was interested in, but we couldn't get any information on where they were from.  They could have been from China for all we knew, and that would sort of defeat the purpose of souvenirs.

So we headed back, gathered our things, and our host was nice enough to drive us back to the bus station.  This time we made sure to sit on the shady side of the bus, and our trip was much more pleasant. We had a short wait at the train station in Vladimir and then, before we knew it, we were back in Moscow. It was a wonderful trip and we saw a lot of wonderful places.  Of course, there are many more photos for those who wish to see them...