Hotel Pleshanov's Manor Yaroslavl

... l'auberge ou on etait la veille est pleine, les hotels qui sont dans nos guides, soit n'existent plus soit sont trop chers. donc direction le dortoir de la gare de Kazan qui nous propose tres agreablement une chambre pour 100euro la nuit ... bizarrement nous avons decline son offre lol Donc on va a la gare Iaroslavsky d'ou on part le lendemain. on depose les bagages a la consigne et on se prepare a dormir a ...

... language learning as well today. Just a few phrases but nothing very easy in the language. In the end the guide was showing folk dancing steps. There was also a welcome drink for Cosmos passengers which we joined in to. The guides welcomed all and told a few humorous stories. (Must remember the traveller's poem). After dinner the band played some folk music. Many of the tunes were familiar. Then to bed.

... been dammed along its entire length creating a chain of reservoirs and at each dam a lock is needed. The Rybinsk reservoir that we are passing through is huge and occupies an area of 4,500square kilometers and is considered to be the largest artificial water basin in the world. It stretches for 140kilometers and was once again constructed in the 30s and 40s in order to make the river navigable, where before there were 40 or more rapids. It was also ...

... size - many built by Stalin for public housing. They don't look too maintained from the outside, but evidently they were well built with good sized apartments with thick walls to keep warm. Modern apartment blocks are now being built and are extremely expensive - lots of building going on. We were driven to the New Maiden Convent (Novodevichy Convent) which in the past was favoured by the Tsars and the boyars as a way of getting rid of a wife - the women ...

... Russia. There is a large stone with an inscription on it about when the town was started. The guides argue about the translation of the inscription -- does it say on this place or on this spot Yaroslavl was innaugurated... So Konstantin asked Rutherfurd what was the translation and he confidently announced "On this site was innaugurated the town of Yaroslavl in 1010". Trivial, but it shows that Rutherfurd was here to research his ...

... don't know how to tell him its bed time. His dad did come past our cabin a few times and rumble something at him which sent him running back to his cabin every now and then and hopefully before too long he will be called for bed. IMH: Iger's dad clearly scares the living daylights out of him and we were debating if he has a respect for his father and his instructions - he's really a very well behaved and well mannered boy, not scared to say Spasiba (thank you ...

... how long they will take to reach Australia but hopefully they will arrive in Australia before we do! I wanted to send an e-mail ahead of us to our hostel in St Petersburg so we headed to the other side of the Metro station were there was a McDonald's restaurant with a free WiFi Hot Spot. We were also a bit peckish so we did something we had said we would not do on this trip and we bought something from McDonalds. We got a cheeseburger and a chickenburger each ...

... went through all the beautiful scenic spots during the night time). If it wasn't for the Lhasa to Beijing journey I'd be feeling pretty let down at this point if I'd done this expecting a scenic trip. So after arriving and moscow and going and checking into our hostel we headed out for a munch and then made our way to red square. Bloody impressive at nightime I tell you. There was some massive building (im not sure what it was) totally lit up ...

... around. The metro network is enormous and includes 12 lines with all the signs, of course, written in Russian. It took me nearly an hour to find my hostel which was located on the wrong street and had a sign about the size of a CD case on the door. After checking-in and showering I headed directly down to Red Square which is located in the heart of the city. The ...

... in our group and might be the only one able to climb it without having a heart attack or overexhausted.... Interestingly, I always like to climb up the tallest buildings of the cities I visited (except the Eiffel Tower in Paris and the World Trade Center in New York, which I can only take elevators to their tops...) and of course I won't give up this good chance. And she was right. Even Yaroslavl is never really a super gorgeous city, it's ...