Suzdal 'end of winter' fun!

Sun = end of Winter is coming!

5 hours to arrive in Suzdal 8am- 1pm, in a comfortable bus, with the obligatory cracked windscreen!!  Public holidays and events = mass exodus onto the motorways, and today as we approach Suzdal, is no exception, to join in some end of Winter fun. (Maslenitsa= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslenitsa).

Lovely view (bottom right)

But it is a daytrip out of the sprawling metropolis of Moscow with scarey-crows (sic)(effigies to burn Winter away)/ blini/ dancing/ geese fighting/ Suzdal Kremlin and Saviour Monastery of St. Euthymius. 

Arriving, snowmobile rides are offered for 200 RUR- best money I ever spent! Wheeeeeeeee! :)  As well as horse-drawn troika rides and stalls of tat, and Medovukha (Russian: Медовуха).  But for all the Maslenitsa frolics and re-shuffling of our programme, we are fed (the pork cutlet I would not recommend, at least I think it was once pork) / watered, and do a quick mini tour of Suzdal (i.e. some geese pecking at each other and some people merrily dancing in costumes)...miss the effigy-burning, Suzdal Kremlin but are rewarded with a 'learnt by rote' robot guide, who statistically informs us all about the number of churches, monasteries, windows and doors in Suzdal, in a wonderfully monotone, regurgitated manner! Soul-less information! 

Light and temperature are rapidly falling and so we retreat back to the buses and the 3 hour ride back to Moscow!  With a pit-stop to a petrol station, and an unceremonious pee in the woods, as the petrol station attendant grumpily informs us the toilet doesn't work.  A fair day out (despite a little bus fever!), if a little overpriced (2500 RUR) but well a day out is a day out!  Happy Maslenitsa! ☼