Saturday we got up bright and early for our bus ride to Vladimir and Suzdal. The trip wasn’t exactly what I thought it would be, but I’ll get in to more on that later.

After we’d been driving for about an hour and a half we stopped at a rest area to pick up a group of college students that were joining us. I decided to take advantage of the bathrooms there since we still had another hour or two before we got to Vladimir. Our guide had warned us that they were pay toilets, so I knew to have 10 rubles (about 43 cents) handy before I went in. What I was not expecting was that inside each stall was a hole in the floor.

Now it was a very nice hole, porcelain and everything, and you even got to flush the hole. It was not however, a new experience I was willing to try that early in the morning. Thankfully I didn’t have to go that bad, and so my 10 rubles were the only thing that went down the drain.

When we got to Vladimir we picked up our main tour guide. She was full of historical information and insisted on sharing all of it with us, down to the very last detail. Some of it was interesting, most of it was just too much though, “My dear people, this building was once a textile factory, it is now an office building, blah blah blah”.

It really put a damper on the day. I think most of us were expecting to see a couple of historical sites and then be let loose at the Cucumber Festival. It wasn’t like that at all. Instead, Führer Tour Guide kept us on a very tight leash. She also was constantly referring to us as, “My dear people” (the college students made a drinking game out of it).

Most of the Vladimir portion of the tour consisted of St. Demetrius Cathedral, Assumption Cathedral (you know what happens when you assume don’t you?), and the Golden Gates. All three are UNESCO World Heritage Sites and I’ll start with St. Demetrius, because that’s where the tour started.

I’ll have you know that I was reprimanded while taking that photo. In order to get a better shot, I dared to walk ten feet away from the group while the tour guide was talking.

The cathedral was built in the 1190s by Prince Vsevolod III the Big Nest (the “Big Nest” nickname is because he and his wife had at least 14 children).

We weren’t able to go inside of this church, but that’s okay. The outside was beautiful enough. There are over 1,000 individual carvings adorning the outside. The most noticeable is this one of King David, it appears on the building three times.

From St. Demetrius we were shepherded over to Assumption Cathedral (Do not dawdle my dear people!).

Vladimir was the capital of Russia from 1169 to the middle of the 14th century. Assumption was the principal church where Russian princes were crowned during this time and for some time after the capital was moved to Moscow.

Alexander Nevsky was named the Grand Prince of Vladimir in 1252. Nevsky was one of the great warriors of Russia during the Mongol period and was adored by his people. Prior to his death, he took religious vows and was given the holy name of Alexis. In 1547 he was canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church as the patron saint of soldiers. See, I told you, they loved him.

Alexander died of pneumonia in 1263 and was buried in Assumption Cathedral. In 1710 Peter the Great founded a monastery in his honor in St. Petersburg. in 1724, on Peter’s orders, Nevsky’s remains were transferred from Vladimir to the monastery. The people of Vladimir were very upset by this decision and begged the Tsar not to move the body of the saint. According to our guide, “Peter the Great finally relented and gave them the finger”.

She meant, of course, that they left one finger in Nevsky’s original tomb and moved the rest of his body. It still cracks me up to picture Peter the Great flipping people the bird though.

The Chapel of St. George and this giant bell tower were added on to the church in the 1800s. These additions were built out of red brick covered in white mortar, instead of limestone like the cathedral. That’s why the style and color is so different.

And lastly we have the Golden Gates. Built in 1163, the massive oak doors of the Golden Gates formed the main entrance to Vladimir. While we were there, the gates were surrounded with restoration and repair equipment. So I didn’t even bother to photograph it. I did find someone else’s photo from a different time to share with you though.

And that, my dear people, is it for today.