Sunday, July 22, 2007

Golden Ring Tour : Vladimir & Suzdal

By the advice and search of my friend Erdinc, we have done a small trip to the two cities of the Golden Ring cities of Russia : Vladimir and Suzdal. Two cities are nearly 250 km northeast of Moscow and takes 3 hours by car.

Vladimir is an old and not much crowdy, not developed Russian city. Buildings old, not to much peaople. Rather it was not very interesting. Some parks, some churches. So we stayed a few hours there.

Suzdal 25 km far from Vladimir was a really exiting and different town. I felt myself in a sceen from the 1400s, within the history. Town is full of churches, cathedrals and has a holy atmosphere. Houses are usually small dacha houses and there is too little number of people. No cars, single street, some small roads between. Its a such a holy historical, it should be seen once. Specially when the sun going down, with red sky over the churhes, which are the tallest building in the town gives you a cardpostal feeling.

Hoping to find a hotel in these small cities, we went there without having hotel reservation. Unfortunately all the hotels were full, beacuse of the weekend. Having asked nearly 7 hotels we understood that we have no other than choice than returning back to Moscow. So we returned late at night and have finished our tour early.

Having these trip i have seen the classical Russian town life, peoples style and general Russia view. Hoping to visit all other cities on the golden ring..