russia: rostov Veliky

We added Rostov Veliky to our travel calendar because the guidebook said it was cute. Booking train tickets was easy, as was booking a place to stay.

We met up on Saturday morning at 0700 (okay, okay, I was 2 miutes late, which is really good for me,) at one of the metro stations in Moscow, then went to find our train. There are three massive train stations close to each other in Moscow, so we start our weekend trips from these stations most of the time.

Our train left at 0735, and not long after departure a waitress came through and asked what we wanted to eat. When I booked our train tickets I guess I chose a ticket that included food, which I've never done before. As far as I could see our tickets didn't look any different than previous tickets I've booked, but oh well. All three of us chose blinis with ham and cheese inside.

The food was pretty good, and a nice way to start the day. That being said, I didn't have much of an appetite, so I wasn't able to finish the hot food. The meals also included bread rolls, candy bars, and small bottles of water. There were also travel sets with slippers, eye masks, shoe horns, and shoe wipes.

We arrived in Rostov (it's usually shorted to just Rostov,) about three minutes late, obviously not a big deal. As has become my habit, I got a hot chocolate from a machine in the train station. These hot chocolates are always cheap, and the right size for kicking my craving.

From there we walked to the accomodation I'd booked. The walk wasn't long, but we started to realize the weather wasn't going to be great for walking all day as we usually do. Blowing wind and snow, and it was cold :)

Checking in was easy, and we were able to do so straightaway. We had a room with three single beds (mine was actually a foldout chair.) It also had a small kitchenette with a kettle and some cups for coffee/tea.

After relaxing for quite a while we finally walked out the door to start exploring. We'd checked the guidebook and online, and knew there wasn't a huge list of sights to see so we weren't in a huge hurry to get started.

At the beginning of the walk we started questioning if we were going to be able to see anything at all. The wind was blowing, and the snow was falling, basically right into our faces. This meant we were walking with our heads down, not really able to look up and see where we were going. There were drifts everywhere: on roofs, on cars, in front of doors, etc...

Eventually we got to our first sight. At least we thought so, until we realized the way we approached was not to an entrance gate. The kremlin in Rostov is surrounded by long white walls, I imagine it is quite picturesque in non blizzard weather. Going the wrong way to find the entrance didn't seem like a small mistake, which is normally what it would be.

We walked around to the other side, and found a small-ish gate to walk through. This gate took us into what must've been a side courtyard of sorts, which is totally dominated by the Church of the Assumption. The guidebook says this church is quite fantastic, but we weren't super impressed. It currently seems to be under renovation inside, with scaffolding everywhere. 
The iconostasis was empty, and scaffolding blocked what could still be seen of the frescoes. We were able to see some wood carving, which seemed to be columns of wood grapes.

After exiting the church, we walked out another side of the courtyard, which was a tunnel of sorts through one of the Kremlin walls. Just at the point where the tunnel exited into the Kremlin we had to pay a fee to enter the grounds, which was super cheap. The cashier said there was another, main ticket office, but I was totally mixed up when she gave directions.

In the middle of the Kremlin territory is a pond, which was very frozen during our visit. We saw people sliding across the ice in tubes, which looked fun. Also in the middle of the territory was an ice maze, though the walls were really short. 
We also found a throne built of ice, and the year 2019 formed in ice.

We found a souvenir shop in the basement of a church, one of the major reasons for stepping in was to warm up. The wind and cold had started to hurt my fingers, eeep. We all bought magnets, and I bought postcards as well.

We finally found the main ticket office, we stayed inside there for longer than people usually do in a ticket office. There were a couple benches to sit on, and a hot chocolate machine, how could we say no?

After warming up we bought tickets to the one museum we wanted to see, and walked in that direction. The museum of enamel is not huge, but we really liked it. There were about four rooms of different displays of enameled items. 
There was a room that showed a bit more of the history of the art of enameling, the other rooms showed enameled items. We saw religious items, treasure sort of items, and jewelry. It was a neat museum, showing off a form of art I'm sure most people have never seen much. 

Even though we didn't see much that day, all three of us were done for the day. We walked out of the Kremlin, across the street, and into a cafe for dinner. I didn't have an appetite so I stuck with soup, while the girls had 'real food.'

On the way back to our room we stopped at the grocery store to pick up snacks for the next day.

Normally I wouldn't mention curtains, but the curtains in our room were good curtains that actually blocked the light. We all slept off and on until 0915 Sunday morning, which is way later than normal. We did the same thing we normally do on Sunday mornings of our weekend trips: play around online.

We finally checked out around noon, all bundled up for the day. It was still snowing and blowing, but it was a few degrees warmer ('only' -10C,) which made a huge difference.

On the way to our first sight, I spotted a church that had a big snow drift near an entrance. We were all curious how deep the drifts were, so I decided to explore. I took a few steps, the snow was up to my thighs. As I started to walk up the steps (I think?) I fell backwards, ending up on my back like a turtle. I laughed at myself, as it was rather funny. Angela took photos while laughing, Claire laughed too. I didn't expect any different, I know I looked funny.

We found an open entrance of the church on another side (after brushing off the snow all over me,) and walked in. The advantage to wearing a hat in winter is that it also serves as a head covering in a church, you don't have to pull out a headscarf to enter a church.

The inside of this church was rather dark, and the frescoes weren't very bright. It seemed like incense had been burned for years and years and years, and the smoke had darkened the paint. :(

We continued walking, at one point going up a rather steep hill, which ended up being the wrong way. Getting up the hill was a struggle, and since it ended up being the wrong way to go, we sort of skied back down on our feet.

We entered another church, another old church. There was a lit chandelier, which made this church a lot brighter than the first one we'd seen. A woman working in the church (a nun? A volunteer?) gave us a mini tour, which was awesome. She really wanted us to know about the church, despite the fact that she didn't speak any English, and we only understood a little of what she was saying.

She also handed out brochures for the church. It's a very small church, we were surprised by the brochures.

We finally arrived at the first sight we'd planned to see, Lake Nero. Rostov lines the lake, and I think the views would normally be beautiful. Since we were visiting town in a mini blizzard, we could hardly see. We knew there was a lake out there, but we couldn't really see it. There were blocks of ice stuck up in one area, but that was it. While we were watching the lake we saw a guy on a snow machine speeding across the lake, it looked like fun. (And really cold.)

We took a team photo by a big cross, which would normally have given us a pretty view of the water. Angela noticed what looked like runes on the cross, it was pretty.

From there we walked to our next sight, a museum. The museum of the frog princess is based on a legend, a rather long one.

To visit this museum, you're supposed to take a tour, in Russian. This is because there are a few interative parts of the museum, to go with parts of the story. We participated in these games, even though we didn't completely understand what we were doing until we looked up the story online.

The rest of the museum (which was only one room,) was filled with frogs. Stuffed frogs, glass frogs, etc... Big, small, medium, etc... SO MANY FROGS.

At the end of the visit they handed us a coupon for tea at the restaurant across the street. We'd already been planning to go there, so this worked out really well. We had our tea, and each of us added food.

After being in the cafe for a while we walked down the street a little more, to a monastery. The monastery of St Jacob the Saviour. There was no entry fee and walking in was easy. We entered the main church of the monastery, and loved it. Even though it was started to get dark outside, there was still a decent amount of light inside. Great church, if that makes sense.

When we walked back outside the sun had set, so we started walking. It took longer than we'd expected, and our legs were super tired by the time we got to the grocery store. Walking through the snow and wind, and over all the snow was exhausting.

After the grocery store we walked to another cafe, about three minutes away. Despite having the name of cafe, this place was clearly not expecting walk in customers off the street. I was pretty sure it was clear that we wanted three pots of tea, as there were three of us. Instead, they served us two pots, one of green tea and one of black tea. This place didn't really want us around, as they brought us the check before we asked for it, but that didn't make us pay any sooner or get out any faster.

We got from there to the train station, arriving about an hour before the train departed. The train on the way back was as nice as the day before. The food choices were the same, and we each got another set of slippers and such.

Another successful weekend :)