After too many late nights we were glad to have a leisurely morning on board.
But who could resist the temptation of seeing us go through the mother of all locks in the small hours? I know
... madness... but Rick loves all that. It must be a man thing.
Leisurely in the sense that we didn't HAVE to be anywhere till we docked at our next stop.
But I did manage to catch the lecture on Gorbachev followed by the Program Director's talk on other Viking cruises.
It was really interesting to hear how unpopular Gorbachev is in Russia, and how much the country suffered economically at that time of massive transition.
One lady told me she was happy with Gorby for letting people speak freely again so maybe as time goes on his legacy will be clearer.
It was also interesting to discover how reviled Boris Yeltsin is for 'losing' vast amounts of redevelopment money and handing the country to the oligarchs.
The joke is that the French know exactly where it is
... in very concrete terms... on the Cote d'Azure.
Actually, no leader came out as popular from what I could gather. So, I guess the Russians are no different from anyone else.
The 'other Viking cruise' presentation focused on the Grand European Tour (many in the audience had already done it and made happy noises) and China (deafening silence).
The real audible interest came with the last section about the new ocean cruises.
This was definitely a hmm...hah... moment.
By this time, and after a nice lunch, we were ready to take on Russia again as we docked in Yaroslavl. Yaroslavl is at the confluence of two rivers and is a 'Golden Ring' city i.e. VERY picturesque.
It was our first provincial town.
After the city experience of St Petersburg, and the villages of Mandrogy and Kizhi, it was a new experience to see what life was like in the Russian equivalent of a flattened version of Newcastle (NSW) or Gloucester (UK) or Harrisburg (US)
.
First we visited the (ex) Governor's Palace.
Each group was greeted by a young girl role-playing the governor's daughter -- pretty naff really and I felt a bit sorry for her.
She quickly took us through rooms with portraits and that sort of thing, finishing at a grand room where a very good trio was playing and a few young in-role couples were dancing.
And I must say, the music has really been one of the unexpected highlights of this trip.
However -- suddenly I was jolted out of my chilled psychic state when the dancers split up and started roving around the audience standing around the edges of the room.
Being a classic introvert, I hate nothing more than being the centre of attention especially in a room full of strangers.
So my usual defensive mechanisms clicked into place-- rummaging in my bag, moving into the middle of the crowd, hanging my bags around me, having my listening device wires and cords very visible
. My strategy is to make it quite clear that to pick me would be more trouble than it was worth.
It worked, thankfully, and I could relax again, relishing in the embarrassment of the awkward steps of the overweight American, the clumsy Scot and the many left feet of the Canadian, happy in the knowledge that it wasn't me up there making a fool of myself, struggling with my happy face.
After that, a visit to the market.
This was a bit like the one in Fontenay-le-Comte but without so much fish and smelly offal with offaly pies and such-like.
It wasn't crowded either. Actually when I think about it, we were the only ones there!
I wasn't quite sure what to make of that.
The Viking chef had set up a tasting table for us to try various local favourites and apart from it being a bit of a bun-fight (after all, lunch had been one whole hour ago!) we tried some nice smoked cheese
.
In our free time we wandered through a very different kind of market - a bit like a Russian Thomas Dux but without samples or much in the way of customers either, strangely.
I was starting to wonder where everyone was.
AT LAST -- we found them.
In this glorious and unusually hot weather for Russia, the locals weren't going to waste their time hanging out in markets, down- OR up-market!
No.
They were in the new pedestrian-only section just a couple of streets over, chilling in the al fresco restaurants, drinking beer, smoking, and listening to a cool guitar.
There was one called, intriguingly, Cuba Libre.
I wonder if they'll change the name now that Cuba IS libre?
Sadly we were running out of free time and had to dash back to the meeting spot to see the Church of Elijah the Prophet
.
Luckily it hadn't been bombed in the war so the church, frescoes and icons were still intact.
It seems Stalin (a REALLY unpopular political leader here -- understandably!) blew up loads of churches too.
Shades of the Taliban -- as well as Henry VIII -- one very nasty piece of OUR history we shouldn't forget.
The next church we visited had suffered this fate which surprised me as there was a beautiful church with the most magnificent interior right on the very spot where Stalin had blown it to smithereens.
It seems that one of these oligarchs donated vast amounts of money to have it rebuilt.
It's still in the process of having the exterior decorations finished, but as he's said, money is no problem - just be patient.
There was plenty of controversy over this as heaps of locals thought it was a huge waste of money when they needed things like schools and hospitals
.
They had a point.
But then they were told - take it or leave it. The church or nothing.
So the they took it and the church was rebuilt.
Better a gorgeous church than nothing, that's for sure!
There were only a couple of church-going people standing there, and I felt like a real Yahoo taking a photo.
Ignorant tourists!
Even though I'm no church goer, the service that was going on when we entered was truly lovely.
The chanting of the priest sounded very much like Buddhist monks - that same sort of cadence...deeply meditative.
I couldn't understand a word, but I 'got' it.
As the afternoon drew to a happy close, we wandered through the gardens surrounding the church and had a look at the War Memorial
.
Again, the recent 70th anniversary of the ending of WWII were visible.
Then we strolled along the high embankment, with views out to a nearby island with a fun park behind the trees, and more gardens and open spaces with flower displays, cycling,roller blading and just promenading.
It must be glorious in winter too with its snowy slopes falling steeply down to the river-- great for sledging -- and the icy rivers -- great for skating.
Yaroslavl-- a great town for chilling.
Chilling in Yaroslavl
Wednesday, July 01, 2015
Yaroslavl, Jaroslavl, Russian Federation
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Comments

2025-02-14
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HARVEY STOCKWELL
2015-07-17
Carol you write so well, and succinctly too. I had never thought of it but I'd like to visit some out-of-big-city Russia. Your account is enticing and humanizes the whole experience.