russia: rostov on don

I had no major reason for choosing Rostov on Don as our last city for this trip other than I knew a couple people who had been there previously. It was also going to be one of the host cities for the upcoming World Cup football tournament, so hey, why not?

Rostov on Don (this Rostov is different from Rostov Veliky in both geographic location and the city is on the banks of the Don River,) doesn't have a specific point in history when it was established, at least not that I can find. 

It seems the area was used to control trade between Turkey and the empire, and was built up over time. The current city seems to be an amalgamation of a few villages/towns/a fortress in the area.

We took a night train from Volgograd, arriving in Rostov in the morning, right on time. The train station in Rostov wasn't anything spectacular, much to my disappointment.

We'd booked accomodation in the city center, so we started walking. The weather was good, though we were sweating while carrying our packs. It wasn't the best of times for Google maps to stop working, whoops.

The entrance was around the back of the building, which wasn't immediately obvious. Thankfully I've lived in Russia long enough to think that might be the case.

It was easy to check in, we only had to wait about 20 minutes for our room to be ready. We used the time to get ourselves sorted, and charge electronic gadgets. Since Rostov on Don doesn't have any well known sights, we took some time to go through the guidebook suggestions to figure out a plan for the day.

We started walking, and kept going for quite a while. We saw a Lenin statue along the way, de rigeur for a Russian city. Most of our path was heading slightly up, plus the sun and heat made us sweat like nobody's business. We were following a trail on a travel app, which didn't keep us on main roads. At a couple points we weren't sure if we were going in the right direction, and we got cranky from dehydration.

Finally we got to the end of the walking, the top of the hill. Finally we got to our first intended sight of the day: a church/monastery. 

A cute little blue and white gate stood open, there was no entry fee. The first building we saw was the main church, but it wasn't open. It looked quite new, I wonder what the decoration was like inside.

I was able to go into a small church, at the back of the property; it was painted blue and people were praying inside. I got the feeling this wasn't a touristy monastery, so it was nice to 'hear' the silence. Plus we enjoyed the breeze, and the views of this part of the city.

On our way back toward the city center we crossed a rickety bridge over a creek, said hello to a dog, guzzled water ate an ice cream, etc... I don't think water has ever tasted that good, we really needed it.

During this part of the walk we came to a huge traffic circle with a park of sorts in the middle. This park was covered with decorations for two important events: Victory Day, which takes place on 9 May every year in Russia, and the World Cup football tournament.

I took photos of both sets of decorations, it was an adventure figuring out how to cross traffic both ways, as there were no zebra crossings that we could see.

Dinner was a bit of a challenge that night. We ended up settling for a vegetarian something or another, which wasn't all that great. Hmmm.

After dinner we walked more along the pedestrian section of Pushkin street. The city has done a really nice job of making the middle of the street walker friendly, with statues and benches galore. 

The part we walked had a 'lantern' of sorts with pictures that were lit up for the evening, which I loved.

There were a couple stops with musicians playing, and food like cotton candy being sold. I also really liked the church we came to, though I can't for the life of me remember the name.

The next morning our first goal was to find a grocery store to get breakfast food. That proved to be harder to do than we expected. Proper grocery stores aren't always everywhere in a city center.

After breakfast we started our day by repeating how we had finished the evening before: walking along the pedestrian part of Pushkin street. Since we were now in daylight, we saw a bunch more statues, sculptures and benches. At the very end of the street was a small platz with a series of stars, designed to look like a tunnel of stars. I used them to practice hair flipping for photos, hee hee.

We followed streets according to nothing in particular, eventually getting to what was labeled as a monument to veterinarians. Cute.

We kept going, heading back toward the city center along a different street. (Why repeat a street if you don't need to?)

On this other street we found a park with a small war memorial, and a big sculpture of a crocodile. It was also filled with shade, which felt really good at that point. As we got closer to the main areas of the city we saw more and more decorations for 9 May, which was coming in less than a week. The corner of another park was covered in the decorations, I loved the colour.

One of the sights listed in the guidebook was a really really tall memorial. It is an obelisk of sorts, with a different shape at the top. There is also a statue of a woman up there. The whole thing is dedicated to the liberators of the city. (In WW2, I imagine.) We weren't able to get close to the obelisk, as the platz in which it was located was being set up with a stage for the upcoming holiday.

We kept going, eventually at a small park with a statue of Empress Catherine the Great in front of a church. Impressive statue. 

Somewhere around now, we stopped at a bakery, it was surprisingly good. Or maybe I just have low standards for Russian bakeries.

We were really close to our hostel when we found another big memorial. It is dedicated to the soldiers of the 1^st cavalry unit, I don't remember the years listed. The reproductive organs of the horse are interesting, leading to a nickname from locals, something about eggs.

This platz was also covered on one side with decorations for 9 May. I know I keep mentioning these, but it is a HUGE holiday, celebrated in every town in the country, often with a military parade of some type.

We went under the street here, and found a series of mosaic decorations on the walls, really neat to see. If I understand correctly, these were supported by the government, so they show different aspects of Soviet life. Men and women were shown equally, except that the women were often wearing high heels. Who picks fruit from trees while wearing heels???

We kept going, back at street level. We found the park where Lenin stands, because you're not in a Russian town if you haven't seen the man at least once. 

From this statue we could see a church down another street, so that's where we went next.

Unfortunately, the church was closed for renovation, so we weren't able to go inside. I wonder when the renovations will be finished. Either way, the shiny big dome was eye catching. We picked up sushi for dinner, then headed home.

The next morning we decided to walk in a new direction, toward a bridge going over the river on which the town is located. As we got close to the bridge we could see it was blocked off by policemen. Argh.  

I don't speak nearly enough Russian to be able to ask the question why, then understand the answer.  We could also see crowds gathering down by the water, though we didn't know what was happening.

A bit of searching online led us to information that some sort of flotilla and flyover was going to happen, something about the birthday of a particular military unit. We staked out our places too, and waited. And waited and waited and waited. I got sunburnt, Bo took shelter.

The event itself wasn't very impressive, at least not the flotilla. The flyover was cool though, a few helicopters had flags, and there were some people jumping out of planes. Neat. The whole thing didn't last long, we definitely waited longer. Still, I'm glad we got to see it. Random fun experiences while traveling.

When the crowd started clearing out we realized police were letting people walk across the bridge again, so that's where we went. We ended up walking less than halfway across the bridge, it was really windy. The view down the river was nice, but I felt like I was going to be blown off the bridge. 

We took the stairs back down, all the way to the embankment, and walked along there for a bit. The city of Rostov on Don did a good job in building the embankment, making it a nice place to take a walk. Good shade, flat walking area, etc... Of course there were vendors with the usual variety of cheap plastic toys, cotton candy, and more.

We looked at our watches and realized we needed to get moving, so we went back to the stairs, back up toward the start of the bridge.

Instead of crossing the bridge we went into town, back to the place we'd gotten sushi the night before. This time we got our order to go, then walked back to our hostel.

We grabbed our bags and walked to the train station, enjoying the sunset along the way. Not surprisingly, our train boarded and departed on time.

While I don't feel the need to go back to Rostov on Don, I've learned never say never.