By Nevsky's Finger!

These first four photographs are what we woke up to Monday morning, before and after. The before pictures were taken earlier in the trip (one has been posted before). The smoke is from the peat bog fires that plague Russia during the summer. Usually, it clears up a bit during the day, but since there is no air conditioning here, we open our windows at night. I've been waking up to a smoke-filled room all week (no smoke detector of course, so no need to worry about setting that off).


The next pictures are all from Vladimir, except for the final panorama.

How Russians live in Vladimir and the church where Nevsky's finger is held/where the Final Judgment is.

View from the bluff that the church sits on.

View from our hotel. As you can see, there is a whole lot of nothing except for living quarters in Vladimir.

Suzdal'

The church in Vladimir from behind (that is, from the bluff) and the reason why I refuse to consider this country's infrastructure developed.

A random picture that I'm not really sure why I took it, and my Лебедное озеро - Swan Lake.

These last three are from Neskuchnyj Sad, my usual place to walk since it's mostly forest and therefore cooler than the rest of the city, and it's directly across the street from the apartment.

This is a house that used to be well outside of Moscow, but urbanization has made it part of the city. It is where Pushkin composed much of his poems during the summer.