After
half of new Lily went to Petersburg for the weekend we were looking
forward to a relaxing weekend trip to Plyos, one of the three smallest
towns in Russia right on the Volga where Levitan used to paint his
landscapes.
How wrong we were. Natalya decided to announce that we were going during feedback which made all the remaining Lilys decide to tag along. Then she decided we needed a tour guide for our tiny town. She clearly had never traveled with Vovchik and Sveta like we had. They're the only tour guides we ever need. But because of this tour guide situation that forced Sveta to be the translator instead of just tagging along to hang out with her crazy American ducklings.
To mentally prepare ourselves for something so ridiculous, we decided to go to the basement across the street (a bar that's not nearly as sketchy as calling it "the basement" makes it sound) for beverages and a rousing game of boars on a board: the board game, brought to you by Clarence and Vikloti. Friday nights in Yaroslavl.
The next morning we woke up nice and early to pick up Sveta and drive two and a half hours to Plyos. Within the first three seconds of arrival Vovchik had already gotten himself an ice cream bar without any of us noticing that he had gone missing. We couldn't find our guide and meandered aimlessly for a while until he stumbled upon us eating our ice cream and harassing the souvenir vendors.
He was a hilarious human being who looked like he hadn't gone home from the night before and started the tour off by leading us up a small hill and then warning us that this was nothing compared to what we were about to walk up.
The next hill we walked up was second only to the hills we climbed in Africa that were covered in mud that made it essentially like ice skating uphill. This one was covered in cobblestones that had been walked on so much that they had a shine to them with gaps in between that could make the most coordinated person break their ankle, much less a group of American tourists who can barely walk on flat ground without a trip to the ER. Despite having only climbed 50 meters up the hill, we lost one group member and were breathing like we had just climbed Everest. The view from the top of the hill was incredible and on top there was a little birch tree forest and a beautiful church. I can definitely see why artists would go there. We also had a great view overlooking the dachas (country homes) in all of their cottagey wonder. It was only mildly distracting that the four people who didn't want the tour were the only ones paying attention to it. On the way down the hill we learned about Sveta going to art school which was the perfect way to distract from the horrors of slipping to our death on the cobblestones set at an almost right angle that we were all climbing down in sandals.
Our guide led us to the Levitan museum where we found our straggler and had a very interesting second tour. To make the day even stranger, though, we kept hearing a camera shutter and at first couldn't really figure out where it was coming from. Then all of a sudden we turned around and saw Green Shirt secretly taking photos of TINY CHILDREN. Can someone say "inappropriate!?" Just a few weeks before we were watching Touristas, my new favorite movie, and in the first few minutes one girl is taking pictures of a local child and gets yelled at by the parents. We could not fathom how someone would think that was at all okay but Lily never ceases to amaze us with their inability to function as normal human beings. That was also when we realized that every other time she had stopped suspiciously close to small girls and fallen behind on the tour it was because she was taking pictures of them too! And she continued with this all. Day. Long.
Post-Levitan, we followed Vovchik around like little ducklings to see more sights and by the time we were about to eat each others faces, he and Sveta decided we should go find a restaurant where they could feed their American ducklings.
You would think none of us had ever experienced eating at a restaurant before. People didn't know how to decide on foods they wanted. Grown adults threw fits about the way foods were prepared. Don't even get me started on beverages. One of us fell asleep at the table. Our side of the table was about ready to pounce on the Lilys just to get them to function as capable and decent human beings to our poor Sveta who was forced into ordering what must have been the most jumbled and confusing order that waitress had ever taken. All the same the dumplings I got were absolutely delicious and gave me the necessary blood sugar to avoid murder.
Finally at the end of the day it was down to Becky, Vic, Sveta, and I and we could meander as we had wanted to all day. Obviously we chose to visit the shrine to a deceased cat. It had protected its kitten from a dog unsuccessfully, which in Plyos warrants a statue along the Volga. It was noble and insane all at once.
On the car ride back, Green Shirt took literally 500 more creeper pictures before her beepy camera finally died and she had to put it away.
At least the day ended in us going to a cafe called Etagee that was covered in twinkly lights and repaying Sveta for her being the most patient human being in all the world while learning the phrase, "I shoot to kill" in Russian.
How wrong we were. Natalya decided to announce that we were going during feedback which made all the remaining Lilys decide to tag along. Then she decided we needed a tour guide for our tiny town. She clearly had never traveled with Vovchik and Sveta like we had. They're the only tour guides we ever need. But because of this tour guide situation that forced Sveta to be the translator instead of just tagging along to hang out with her crazy American ducklings.
To mentally prepare ourselves for something so ridiculous, we decided to go to the basement across the street (a bar that's not nearly as sketchy as calling it "the basement" makes it sound) for beverages and a rousing game of boars on a board: the board game, brought to you by Clarence and Vikloti. Friday nights in Yaroslavl.
The next morning we woke up nice and early to pick up Sveta and drive two and a half hours to Plyos. Within the first three seconds of arrival Vovchik had already gotten himself an ice cream bar without any of us noticing that he had gone missing. We couldn't find our guide and meandered aimlessly for a while until he stumbled upon us eating our ice cream and harassing the souvenir vendors.
He was a hilarious human being who looked like he hadn't gone home from the night before and started the tour off by leading us up a small hill and then warning us that this was nothing compared to what we were about to walk up.
The next hill we walked up was second only to the hills we climbed in Africa that were covered in mud that made it essentially like ice skating uphill. This one was covered in cobblestones that had been walked on so much that they had a shine to them with gaps in between that could make the most coordinated person break their ankle, much less a group of American tourists who can barely walk on flat ground without a trip to the ER. Despite having only climbed 50 meters up the hill, we lost one group member and were breathing like we had just climbed Everest. The view from the top of the hill was incredible and on top there was a little birch tree forest and a beautiful church. I can definitely see why artists would go there. We also had a great view overlooking the dachas (country homes) in all of their cottagey wonder. It was only mildly distracting that the four people who didn't want the tour were the only ones paying attention to it. On the way down the hill we learned about Sveta going to art school which was the perfect way to distract from the horrors of slipping to our death on the cobblestones set at an almost right angle that we were all climbing down in sandals.
Our guide led us to the Levitan museum where we found our straggler and had a very interesting second tour. To make the day even stranger, though, we kept hearing a camera shutter and at first couldn't really figure out where it was coming from. Then all of a sudden we turned around and saw Green Shirt secretly taking photos of TINY CHILDREN. Can someone say "inappropriate!?" Just a few weeks before we were watching Touristas, my new favorite movie, and in the first few minutes one girl is taking pictures of a local child and gets yelled at by the parents. We could not fathom how someone would think that was at all okay but Lily never ceases to amaze us with their inability to function as normal human beings. That was also when we realized that every other time she had stopped suspiciously close to small girls and fallen behind on the tour it was because she was taking pictures of them too! And she continued with this all. Day. Long.
Post-Levitan, we followed Vovchik around like little ducklings to see more sights and by the time we were about to eat each others faces, he and Sveta decided we should go find a restaurant where they could feed their American ducklings.
You would think none of us had ever experienced eating at a restaurant before. People didn't know how to decide on foods they wanted. Grown adults threw fits about the way foods were prepared. Don't even get me started on beverages. One of us fell asleep at the table. Our side of the table was about ready to pounce on the Lilys just to get them to function as capable and decent human beings to our poor Sveta who was forced into ordering what must have been the most jumbled and confusing order that waitress had ever taken. All the same the dumplings I got were absolutely delicious and gave me the necessary blood sugar to avoid murder.
Finally at the end of the day it was down to Becky, Vic, Sveta, and I and we could meander as we had wanted to all day. Obviously we chose to visit the shrine to a deceased cat. It had protected its kitten from a dog unsuccessfully, which in Plyos warrants a statue along the Volga. It was noble and insane all at once.
On the car ride back, Green Shirt took literally 500 more creeper pictures before her beepy camera finally died and she had to put it away.
At least the day ended in us going to a cafe called Etagee that was covered in twinkly lights and repaying Sveta for her being the most patient human being in all the world while learning the phrase, "I shoot to kill" in Russian.
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