Getting Old

Day 486

I had originally planned on spending 2 days in Yekaterinburg. I had built in several mistake days and had assumed that every train ride would take an entire day. As you can tell things have gone pretty smoothly leaving me with extra time. I decided to take Yekateringburg slowly. I also wanted to stay put for a few days after moving around so much.

After sleeping in and chatting with Katia over breakfast she went with me to the nearby train ticket office. It was nice to actually know what I was getting for once. Katia also took my passport and immigration card to register me. In Russia tourists must register in any city that they spend more than three days in. Katia is kind enough to register people for free. Most hostels charge from 100 - 900 rubles ($9 - $18) for this. Suddenly passportless I took at very nice walk, the weather was perfect, to the Church of the Blood.

On July 16, 1918 Tsar Nicholas II along with his wife and children were murdered in the basement of a home by the Bolsheviks. The Romanov's weren't buried here, but there is a huge church here now. The onion domes shone and it was really very nice. A statue depicted each of the murdered Romanov's. Oddly, lots of people were taking wedding photo's by the statue.

I covered my head with a borrowed scarf to check out the basement of the church. There was a memorial to each of the Romanov's and some nice icons. It didn't take long to check it all out.

After some lunch at a cafeteria I headed back to the hostel. I was the only one at the hostel and I figured that I would take advantage of having the computer to myself. This idea was dashed when I plugged in my camera and accidentally told it to restart when a window popped up and I just said yes, it was a restart the computer question. As I didn't know the password I couldn't use the internet. Instead I passed the time reading until Katia came back. Then I got down to work.

Once I had made some dinner and read some more I waited again for Katia. She was coming back take everyone out to some clubs. I had planned on a late night but once we got there I was really just falling asleep in my beer so I said that I would walk back. Everyone protested and a couple of Katia's friends drove me back so that I wouldn't have to walk alone.

Back at the hostel I met a nice Irish couple who gave me their left over Moscow metro tickets before falling asleep.