Beautiful sunny day to wake up to in Plyos, followed by an incredible breakfast as only Chastnyy Vizit can put together – smoked salmon with salmon roe option; cherries; freshly squeezed orange juice; omlette with bacon and cherry tomatoes; and if I’d agreed….blini’s; more dessert options like jam-filled doughnuts…..off on the next journey.

Kostroma has an incredible monastery on the Volga river, the Ipatievsky monastery. This is where a young Mikhail Romanov was holed up in the 17th century before going to Moscow to ascend the throne of Tsar. Founded around 1330, over the years the monastery has played host to Catherine the Great and Nicholas 11. After the Bolshevik revolution, the monastery was closed and the majority of treasures transferred to Moscow. Today, the Russian Orthodox church runs the site as a working monastery and museum. Today, my picture of the monastery included a fisherman enjoying the beautiful sunny day on the opposite bank, and hoping for a catch of course!

A few hours drive to Rostov…lots of roadworks and bottlenecks on secondary feeder roads to the M8 freeway, made for a longer journey..….oy! Arrived mid afternoon and legged it to the Kremlin. No sooner than I got there, a thunderstorm and huge rain deluge….curtailed what I was able to see. Still, lovely frescos and iconography from the 15th century.

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Took a panorama of the side of the Kremlin (below), where you can see the onion domes of the Dormition Cathedral (left), the belfry, and St John the Theologian’s Gate Church (right).

The Moscow baroque style of the Hodegetria Icon Church, decorated outside with a pattern of triangles which gives it the effect of reliefs from afar.

And another lovely chrysanthemum, after the storm….