russia: yaroslavl

We chose to visit Yaroslavl for two reasons: one, because it was in the guidebook, and two, because it was one of the city names on the mugs in Starbucks.

Yaroslavl is a city of almost 600,000 people, around 250 kilometers northeast of Moscow. It is considered one of the Golden Ring cities around Moscow, because it used to be important politically, and was an influence in the early history of modern Russia.

Yaroslavl was officially founded in 1010, though there were Viking settlements in the area in the 700s and 800s. (The Vikings were a lot more spread out than most people know.)

It was founded as another city in the principality of Rostov Veliky, and became the capital of its own principality in the 13^th century. In the mid 15^th century it became part of the Grand Duchy of Moscow, and until at least the 17^th century was Russia's second largest city. It was even the unofficial capital of the country for a while.

I'd argue that most people outside of Russia have never heard of Yaroslavl, unless they've studied Russian history. It no longer has any political influence on the country, and is now an industrial city. The city center, the historical area of the city has UNESCO designation, securing its cultural importance in history.

Yaroslavl was named for its founder, Prince Yaroslav. He was one of the princes who founded Kyiv Rus, which is basically the modern empire of Russia.

We took an early morning train on Saturday, it took about 4 hours. From the train station we caught a local bus to get to our accomodation. It was an apartment in a random block of flats, with interesting decor. It was definitely the first time I've seen a theme of England as decoration throughout an entire flat!

After hanging out for a bit, we walked out to explore the city. It was colder than we'd been expecting, and windy. It's not as much fun to explore a new city when you're cold. Each time I pulled out my camera and/or tripod my fingers got really cold, and took a while to warm up. Metal pieces just hold cold, and that cold goes right into fingers.

We saw a monastery and decided to enter the church. This was one of the churches that is more demanding about women wearing skirts. All three of us were wearing pants, but I was the only one asked to put on a skirt. My coat was a ski jacket, I guess it didn't cover enough of me; the coats Angela and Claire were wearing were somewhat longer.

Another ten minutes of walking brought us to the kremlin of the city. (A reminder, the word kremlin simple means fortress. The Kremlin is in Moscow, but many Russian cities have a kremlin.) The walls were painted white, and from the direction we approached it wasn't immediately obvious where the main gate was located.

We found the ticket booth, and discovered several options for tickets, I hate that. I'd much prefer two ticket options for a place like a kremlin: entry to all museums and the grounds, or just entry to the grounds. We ended up choosing to pay the grounds entry fee, as well as the entrance to the museum of treasure and shiny things.

To be honest, there wasn't a whole lot to see in the grounds of this particular kremlin. The churches weren't open, at least not that we could see, which was a shame. There were several souvenir shops, we stepped into all of them for at least a quick glance, and a minute to warm up.

We enjoyed our walk through the museum of shiny things, though the docents seemed to think we were idiots. We are foreigners, not idiots. Sigh. The displays were pretty good, all three of us enjoyed the shiny things :)

By the time we left the museum it was dusk. In terms of taking photos I hate this time of day on a cloudy day. Taking photos at this time of day has everything turning out blue. Ugh. We stepped inside the ticket office again (which was also a souvenir shop,) so I could look up ideas for places to eat dinner.

We chose a Georgian restaurant which ended up being really good. We were still cold when we finished eating, so we took a bus back to our flat instead of walking. 

The bus stop was a block away from where we needed to be, and there was a supermarket on the way between the two, yay.

The next day we packed up and put the key into the postbox for the owner. This day was sunny, but not any warmer. Even though it wasn't actually warmer, it felt warmer, at least in our minds. It was windier though, which was very noticeable.

We walked in a slightly different direction this time, heading straight toward the Volga river, one of the main rivers in the entire country. The city has developed a nice walkway parallel to the river, with a nice view of the water the whole way.

Walking next to the river made it feel even windier. Despite the sun we were just plain cold. We stopped to check out a couple churches, only one of them was open. I wonder if the sight of onion domes will ever cease being interesting to me.

Yaroslavl is said to have one of the largest number of churches in the Golden Ring cities. After our visit, we didn't doubt this statistic. They really did seem to be every block or two. Some of them had land around them, others were just a church. Maybe seeing so many churches in one area blurred them all in my head, but the churches of Yaroslavl all seemed somewhat similar in appearance to us. There were a lot of white churches with green onion domes.

We eventually made our way to a big platz in the city center. On one side of the platz was a lovely church, on the other side was a giant government building. Normally this is where I would've expected to see a Lenin statue, but we didn't see him.

We tried to find an open door to the church, but it didn't happen. Instead we had to settle for looking at the decorative tiling on the outside of the church.

At that point we realized we were absolutely frozen, at the point where it actually hurts. We found a nearby cafe just so we could warm up. It's not fun when your fingers ache from cold. After an hour inside, we hoped stepping back outside would be acceptable again to our fingers.

We saw a couple war memorials, one of which was quite close to another ginormous church. What stuck with me about this church was the beautiful decorative tiling around the main entrance door.

Another sight mentioned on a travel app was yet another church. The church itself wasn't particularly spectacular, but it was the church on one side of the 1000 ruble banknote, so that meant it was worth seeing. We took a local bus to get there, then walked a little more.

This was another church that wasn't open, argh. It wasn't big, and completely forgettable from the outside, so all three of us wondered why it had been chosen to be put on a banknote. Oh well.

We were happy to get back on the bus going back to the city center, as the heat was on high and felt so good.

We went back to the same restaurant for dinner, as we'd enjoyed ourselves the night before. As we moved away from the river, we felt the effects of the wind weaken, so we decided to walk back to the train station. The walk was broken into two parts when we stopped into a Starbucks for drinks and snacks. Since Starbucks was part of the influence in choosing this travel destination, why not?

Our train arrived back in Moscow just short of midnight, we were all able to take the metro back to our flats. 

I don't know if I'll return to Yaroslavl. Maybe if I'm in the mood for an easy trip, in a different season?