It's Sunday so we should visit a monastery

Today we traveled north of Moscow to the small town of Sergei Posad.  It was founded in the 14th century and is renowned as a center of ancient Russian art and architecture. It has served as a place for pilgrimage and as a religious capital of Russia.  We did see a lot of pilgrims who traveled long distances and waited in lines for hours to view relics in the churches. We entered a walled section of the city which contained 8 churches all together.  Following are pictures of some of them.

 

 

 

This is line of pilgrims waiting to view relics.  Because we wanted to just look at the churches, we were allowed to walk past them and enter.  We were restricted as to where we could go, but it still felt weird to jump the line.  This woman's job was cleaning debris and wax off the little tables where worshippers lit their candles

 

Did you check out her shoes 

On the way out we found this little girl enjoying ice cream with her dad.

 

At lunch I finally got a bowl of borscht. It was a bit watered down, but tasty.  

 

On the way we stopped at this store.  It is a super super Wal Mart. The guide showed us Putins favorite vodka and what he thought was the best Russian chocolate. Following pictures are all from that store.

 

 

Above bins have rice, lentils, etc.

 

 

 

While visiting the monastery we tri d the local special drink. It is made from fermented rye bread.  Sounds disgusting, but is really quite good and refreshing

 

Tonight after dinner we will be touring the art in the subway and going back to red square after dark