After visiting Vladimir's historic churches and seeing the city center, my family and I got in a cab and headed for my apartment, where my host mom had made us lunch. The cab ride took us from the mostly-presentable city center out into post-apocalyptic Soviet apartment building land (beat-up grey apartment buildings and trashy garages everywhere you look). I think my mom was in a state of shock: As we left the cab, she said something like, "We gave you such a beautiful place to grow up." But, as anyone who has lived in Russia knows, you can't get discouraged by the ugly buildings; usually the apartments inside are nice and filled with completely normal people. My host mom made some of the best borshch I've ever had, and, after this great lunch, we headed downtown again to see more sights. We met up with one of the other teachers and a few other people visited a beautiful botanical garden, the museum inside the Golden Gates, and a museum glassware produced in Vladimir Oblast. After taking a quick catnap at the American Home (our early morning was catching up with us), we went back to my apartment for dinner. My host family was waiting with homemade pelmeni and more of that delicious borshch. It was a great evening, and it was so cool that my family got to finally see where I live and meet the people who so graciously have hosted me this year.

View from the botanical garden

 Backside of downtown

Famous WWII-era recruitment poster

The group in the botanical garden

A diorama in the Golden Gates museum. It depicts the Mongol invasion of Vladimir in the 13th century 

A WWII bomb fragment

Inside the glass museum 

Walking up to the American Home 

It was a long day

Dinner

Fortunately it was already light when we got off the train in Vladimir at 4:15am. We crammed our luggage into an old Volga taxi cab and headed for the American Home for some breakfast and showers. I showed my family my workplace/home away from home and made an improvised breakfast of grechka and reconstituted condensed milk (hey, at least there was coffee). We relaxed for a few hours, and then we set off to explore the center of the city and see the historic Assumption and St. Dmitry Cathedrals. Unfortunately, the twelfth-century Assumption Cathedral, the most impressive of the two, was closed for some unexplained reason, but we got to see the other cathedral and walk along the walls of the Vladimir kremlin. Here are some pictures from the first half of our first day in Vladimir:

Side street next to the Golden Gates

Mister Gamburger--Vladimir's answer for a hamburger place. I don't recommend.  

The Assumption Cathedral 

Ancient onion domes

Locks on a fence. People often fasten locks to fences or bridges when they get married. Nothing says "committed for life" quite like a lock on a rusty fence.  

Downtown Vladimir

A church with apartment buildings in the distance 

The St. Dmitry Cathedral. It's famous for its carvings. 

Interior of the St. Dmitry Cathedral

 Looking up at the dome 

Vladimir's train station and our not-very-clean river Klyazma

One of the locals

 It's a rough life in the provinces 

Wall of the Vladimir kremlin (kremlin means "fortress"--most old towns have kremlins) 

Alexander Nevsky was here

A school bus

Sitting at my desk back at the American Home

Making breakfast 

On the rampart next to the Golden Gates

 Looking out toward Murom 

Main street Vladimir

Relaxing on the couch at the American Home 

We started our last day in St. Petersburg at the Hermitage. I said we could have spent our whole trip there, right? My sister and I went to an interesting, if poorly done, exhibit of Lissitzky's work. and my parents saw more of the palace interiors and a collection of ancient artifacts from people who lived in the area that is now Russia around 2,000 BCE. We then visited the Peter and Paul Fortress, one of the first structures built in St. Petersburg. We toured a prison that was used to house political prisoners in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I'm sure those prisoners never imagines that a bunch of foreign tourists would be traipsing around their cells. 

In the late afternoon, we headed to the train station to catch our overnight train to Vladimir. An overnight train is an essentially Russian experience; we opted for the second-class kupe compartment (a compartment with four bunked beds), and it was clean and fairly comfortable. Our train left St. Petersburg a little after 5pm and arrived in Vladimir at 4:15am. In theory, this allowed time for at least a little sleep, but I think none of us really slept very much. The combination of frequent passing trains, occasional stops, and constant lurching and bumping didn't make for good sleep. But, after brushing our teeth in the train bathroom (which fortunately was nice and clean) and eating the oranges that we brought with us for breakfast, we got off the train in Vladimir, ready to begin the next part of our trip. 

In a historic grocery story on Nevsky Prospekt

Expensive candies

A St. Petersburg street

View down a canal

An early residence of Peter the Great

A Lada in the courtyard of our hotel

Said courtyard

The front door of our hotel. Ya, that looks two-star to me

My dad in front of the main staircase at the Hermitage

This guy's been dead for a while

The Hermitage 

The Neva River

Rostral Column

You can see the main spire of the Peter and Paul Fortress

Entrance to the prison 

Your prison cell

Taking a break in the Peter and Paul Fortress

The Peter and Paul Cathedral 

A Russian beach. Why go to the Caribbean when you can relax here?  

Those two people in pink look familiar....

In our train compartment

Not sleeping 

Russia's roaring by out the window

Our train sitting at the platform in Vladimir