Yaroslavl
Trip Start
Sep 13, 1997
1
9
22
Trip End
Oct 02, 1997
Yaroslavl,
Russia
Saturday, September 20, 1997
Calling Yaroslavl own' is not really appropriate. It has more than 250,000 population (about the size of Hsin-Chu) and is one of the three most important Golden Ring Cities. We wouldn't visit the other two cities, Suzdal and Vladimir because they are not on the Volga River route and cannot be reached by our boat (sniff....).
Our local guide is a middle-aged woman with gray hair. She took us for a visit to a local puppet theater. Have a stroll in the park along Volga River. It happened that there is a citywide marathon held in Yaroslavl, so young people are everywhere in the streets. Besides walking and driving around the streets of Yaroslavl, we of course visited some of the most famous monasteries and churches in this famous Golden Ring city.
More onion-domed churches with green, red, or blue colors. I started to feel I won't know how to distinguish them after all my pictures are developed......
Our final stop is Transfiguration Monastery, the largest and most important one in Yaroslavl. It is in fact a 'Kremlin' itself, with several churches and a tall bell tower. One of its 'tourist attractions' is a Russian brown bear called "Marsha." This poor (but cute) animal is locked in a cage and had to perform some stupid tricks for us to get some food. I guess she might hope to emigrate to North America......
Our local guide told me to climb the bell tower while she took other people in our group for some souvenir shopping. "You are the youngest one here, why not spending some time climbing the bell tower? You will get the best paranoma of the city."
She's right, I'm the only person under 55 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 still very nice to view from the height. A lot of onion-domed churches stand around different corners of the city. I have taken some nice pictures too (look at my photo gallery)......
The stay in Yaroslavl is short but very memorable.
Back to our ship for lunch, we have more caviar today as appetizer....
After departing from Yaroslavl this afternoon, there were more on-board activities for us trapped on this small ship: "Lecture on Russian folk music" (I missed this one because of taking that long nap), "Russian language lesson No. 2" (?, 2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10, where are you from and I love you' this kind of content), and my favorite one..... "Learning to sing Russian songs!"
I'm glad they offer the English translation of some of the songs. Including the most famous one: "Kalin-ka kalin-ka maya, Kalin-ka kalin-ka maya, Kalin-ka kalin-ka maya, Kalin-ka kalin-ka maya..." I in fact built a separate page on my website for this song "Kalinka".....
Even on the sailing boat, we can still see a lot churches along the shore. All with onion-domed, of course.....
And then, there is another concert "Russian Folk Music" performed by our on-board musicians. It was a day really full of activities.
Guess what? The concert ended with the song "Kalinka." Kalin-ka kalin-ka maya, Kalin-ka kalin-ka maya, Kalin-ka kalin-ka maya, Kalin-ka kalin-ka maya......
