Russia Day 9 (Uglich, Russia): A Home Visit, The Church of St. Dmitri On The Blood and Russian Made Watches

Today we are in the city of Uglich where the Russian watch brand, Chaika, were manufactured.

We visited a local family’s home today. They were very hospitable, shared their home-made goods with us and told us a little bit about how they lived. They are a family of jewelers with 2 kids. One kid is away at university and the other one still a young student that lives at home. Before the watch factory closed down the father was a watchmaker. He and his wife are currently jewelers and their young daughter also dabbles in jewelry making. In the Russian culture it is customary to toast 3 times with moonshine, brown bread and pickles during a visit so we had drunk 3 shots of homemade vodka chased with brown bread and pickles before we left. He also showed us his garden where we wondered around while sipping some homemade dandelion wine he made. All of this happened before 10AM!

After we left the host family we went to the city center which has more churches I’ve ever seen. We started out at the Church of St. Dimitry on the Blood where the body of Tsarevich Dimitry, the last heir of Ivan the Terrible, was found. This church resides on the edge of the Volga River. The bell from this church was the first inanimate object to be sent to exile in Siberia. It was the bell that was rung to announce the death of Dimitry and was whipped and exiled like a human would be.

The next place we went to was the Transfiguration Cathedral. This 5 domed cathedral is the main temple of Uglich and is a popular pilgrim place for Christians. The body of Tsarevich Dimitry was held here before it was brought to Moscow.

Before I headed back I went to a few watch shops that sell Russian Made watches. It was interesting to see but nothing really peaked my interest. When we got back to this ship we had lunch on the top deck where we were served traditional Russian food. They had Pelmeni! We didn’t have anything else planned for the rest of the day besides dinner so we basically had the rest of the evening to ourselves. I ended up going to the bar to catch up with social media, emails and to work on the blog for a bit.

Tomorrow we arrive in Moscow! The last city of our trip