Sunny Yekaterinburg

Our next stop was Yekaterinburg where we got off the train in a drowsy state at 4am.  Luckily we’d been sensible to book a room at the large hotel opposite which had a relatively swish foyer but when we got up to our room we discovered what the guide book meant by Soviet style rooms.  Still it was clean and we were able to grab a few hours extra sleep and much more importantly a shower in the morning.  Once we were clean, repacked and Alice had been able to straighten her hair (because Carly Simon did write that song with her in mind!) we were ready to go and discover what Yekaterinburg had to offer . . .

One of the things that was remarkable about Moscow and also about Yekaterinburg was the wide streets and pavements.  It just goes to show what you can do in a country with all that space, if that was the UK then someone would have built a row of apartments down the middle of the road by now! 

 

Our first port of call was the site where the Romanov’s met their untimely end before their bodies were buried in the forest.  The Russian Orthodox church have since built a huge church on this site which they have named the Church of the Blood which is on the gruesome side.  As you can see this was designed on a hugely bling scale.  They also deified the Tsar and his family posthumously, whilst this isn’t our religion and therefore there is a degree of reluctantcy to pass a viewpoint, having an icon of the Tsar next to an icon of Jesus did not sit comfortably.

Having sourced a coffee house from the guide book we thought we had once again fallen foul of the guidebook and that it no longer existed which resulted in a lot of grr arghs  which turned into embarrassed faces as it turned out to be right under our noses!  This is how we discovered that the outside of places seems to bear no resemblance to the inside . . . outside, everything seems to be on the McDonalds esque side of plasticky and it is not until you go into an establishment that you can tell what it is it like, which just goes to reemphasise that appearances can be deceptive!  So some apologies may be required to the guidebook for our Moscow rage J

It was turning out to be a scorchio day as the temperatures tipped into high 20s as we decided to take a walk along the city pond.  As we approached the pond it appeared to be full of black caviar although as we got closer to the water it turned out to be melting ice which seemed so in congregant with the fact that it was hot enough for us to physically need ice cream!  Luckily we encountered some very helpful Russian people in our attempts to buy ice cream who helped explain to the lady in the kiosk the random ice cream pictures we were pointing at outside the kiosk.  We would have been lost without them because we still have no idea of the Russian for Cornetto.  We went and ate by the river whilst we caught some rays, definitely not something we expected to be doing in Russia in April!

Given our late start we decided to have an early dinner at a gorgeous restaurant called Dacha where each of the areas in the restaurant were decorated in the style of different rooms in a Dacha (a Russian summer house).  We had an opportunity to sample some traditional Russian food and had the most amazing borscht which came with a wide array of things to add which meant that we had a lot of fun trialling different combinations.  Also, thanks to our increasing skills at Rusglish and some very helpful stuff we even managed to successfully order “off menu” which was definitely a feather in our bow.

After our delightful supper we jumped on a tram to the Opera and Ballet Theatre.  We had to buy our tickets from an extremely friendly conductor who seemed very excited to talk to us, unfortunately as she didn’t speak English and we speak exceptionally minimal Russian this was a very one sided conversation – however this didn’t seem to deter her!

Alice had (hopefully) booked tickets for the ballet via the website in Russian with a little help from Babelfish.  Whilst Fern had a lot more faith that this had been successful there was a collective sigh of relief when they gave us the tickets relatively easily . . . however we weren’t however allowed to sit in the seats that we booked for some reason that we couldn’t fathom! 

The Opera and Ballet Theatre is the third most important theatre in Russia, after Moscow and St Petersburg and it was interesting to compare it to the theatres back home.  The first thing that was striking was how much lighter the theatre itself was, whilst still very opulent is was decorated principally in white and gold which gave it a lighter, airier feel.  The other salient difference was that the bars where nowhere near as impressive as the Royal Opera House, but they do take some beating!

We weren’t entirely sure what it was that we had tickets to see other than it was a gala of ballet, but it turned out to our uneducated eyes to be an informal twirl/leap off between different couples as well as some scenes from Don Quixote.

   

We rejoined the train and left Yekaterinburg at 1 in the morning slightly sunburnt and heading off for our next Russian adventure . . .

 Obligatory Lenin photo . . .

Us trying to take our photo with Lenin . . . and failing miserably!

 

And here’s one for Alice uni friends - found this just after I mention that I needed to get the word ergo in the blog!  See it's not just my favourite word