Uglich - Russian for angle

We had to get up at 6 am for our trip to Uglich. The vodka last night made it harder to rise that early. It was cold again this morning, about 20 degrees.

After breakfast, Alexsey and I took the bus for 45-minutes to the central bus station. There we met two other teachers and my translator. The bus to Uglich (100 KM away) took 2 1/2 hours. When we got there, we were met by an official of the Uglich Pedagogical College who was our host for the day. She showed us around the school. A student gave us a tour of the school's museum. We had lunch and I was given a nice book of the town.

After lunch, we toured the town. The town is named for the Russian word for angle - as it is where the Volga changes course. This town is south of Yaroslavl and there are a set of locks to enable ships and barges to travel. The cathedral is set on a lovely piece of land. Three of its interior walls feature copies of Italian frescoes by Rafael. The fourth wall was filled with Russian Orthodox icons. It was beautiful and I'm hoping that there are pictures of it in the book I received. We then went a short distance to a church which was dedicated to the son of Ivan the Great who was killed at this site. It, too, was a beautiful church - decorated quite differently from the cathedral. We walked around and stopped at a private museum in an old house dedicated to life in Uglich 100 years ago.

We had some time to kill before the bus to Yaroslavl and I was given the choice of visiting a museum about prisoners or one about vodka. Even though I knew that the vodka museum featured a tasting at the end, I chose the other museum. It was the smallest museum that I had seen in a long time. Aside from the entry room, there was only one other room - and that was a cell. While that cell may have had at one time 16 people, the 7 of us filled it with ease. I told Alexsey that, after taking a photo of the interior of the cell, I would be telling my students that this is where I had stayed for my two weeks in Russia!

We arrived back home at 7:30. Olga and her mother had prepared a lovely supper for us - of Russian handmade ravioli. When we arrived the cat was sitting at the table watching TV. I was impressed by all of their hard work in making the dinner - and even more impressed with the dinner itself.

Tomorrow, we are traveling to Rostov.

Bye for now