Yekaterinburg

Monday 4th September

We arrived at 1.30pm local time; an older looking gentleman called Alexandre, who said "I don't know English" came to take us to our hotel. We got into his car after walking out of the station for a few minutes; it was a beat up looking thing with two massive cracks across the front windscreen. 

After a 25 minute journey through terrible traffic, and our driver trying to point out things to us in Russian, we pulled into the car park of our hotel. The driver let us in through the back entrance and kindly carried my case, again! We checked into the Hotel Chekhov; it's a boutique hotel in the centre of the city. All the guide books said there was no lift so I expected  a battle with my case, but the kind (and very pretty!) receptionist switched on the lift, just for us!

We had 40 minutes to have a shower and get ready for a walking tour of the city. All I can say is, after 3 days stuck on a train, you want to stand in the shower forever! It was blissful! We were just about to leave the room, it was bang on 3pm, when the phone rang; our guide was waiting... apparently Russians don't abide lateness! We apologised and said we would be right there, ooops!

We met our guide in the hotel reception, her name was Olga and was originally from Kazakhstan. She told us that we were going to follow the "Red Line Tour" for the next 3 hours. It is a walking tour of the city organised by locals and is extremely informative! The main highlights of the tour were the presidential residence, where Putin stays during the summer, the dam, needed for the industrial revolution, the Cathedral of the Spilt Blood, which is built on the site of the Romanov murders, the main square, and the Black Tulip, a memorial to all those who have lost their lives through war.

Here are a few photos from the tour.


Putin stays here when he visits Yekaterinburg!


The main square


Apparently the World Cup is coming here..... :-)


The dam provided water to the factories, particularly during the Industrial Revolution 


Church of the Spilt Blood

The tour was excellent and it was extremely sobering to hear of the plight of the royal family; it is hard to imagine how the murders, especially of the children, were allowed to happen. Although, I am not religious, it is comforting to hear that all members of the family have now been canonised and what happened to them, recognised by the state.

After our tour, we were left in the centre to find our way back to the hotel. Our guide recommended a good Ukrainian restaurant but we wanted to get a bit closer to home before it got dark. We stumbled upon "The Rosy Jane." Now, I am not normally an advocate of going to an Irish pub on holiday, but we were starving and cold and it looked inviting! Thankfully, it did serve some Russian delicacies, so I happily chose beef stroganoff! It was delicious and such a change from noodles! Unfortunately, £7 a pint was a bit hard to stomach so we only had one drink there.

After dinner, we headed to Gordon's Scottish Music Pub as it was on our list of recommendations, turns out so was The Rosy Jane! We had one beer, thankfully only £3 each, and headed back to the hotel. Usually I wouldn't mention the toilets of a pub, but the women's were quite amusing.....all around the walls were pictures of Scots in kilts, nothing wrong with that...until you looked a bit closer (true scotsmen if you know what I mean!). One even had the queen in it!

Enough of that for one night! 

We decided to head back to the hotel as we were due to be picked up for a hike through the Ural Mountains at 8am; we were dreading it as the weather was pretty awful, it was cold and raining! We had literally been in our room for 5 minutes when the phone rang; it was our guide for the next day. As the weather was so bad, it was up to us to decide if we still wanted to go; if not, we could go to the Romanov graves and a few other interesting places....I'm sure you can guess what we chose.....?!


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