{"id":7302,"date":"2017-07-07T11:36:12","date_gmt":"2017-07-07T11:36:12","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2019-04-16T12:37:07","modified_gmt":"2019-04-16T12:37:07","slug":"yekaterinburg-surprisingly-pleasant-city-though-it-could-just-be-the-hotel-html-d1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/laughfrodisiac.com\/2017\/07\/07\/yekaterinburg-surprisingly-pleasant-city-though-it-could-just-be-the-hotel-html-d1\/","title":{"rendered":"Yekaterinburg: Surprisingly Pleasant City, Though it Could Just Be the Hotel"},"content":{"rendered":"

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​After the 24 hours on the train that you read about in the previous post<\/a>, we had crossed the Europe-Asia border and landed in Yekaterinburg, capital of the Urals. The Urals are the mountains that effectively make up the border between the continents, though it’s rough considering it’s all still Russia and kind of nebulous. But it counts! We’re officially in Asia! That means, we’ve crossed into Asia by air (when we flew to Thailand and Cambodia, which I promise I will finally write about after this trip…so…November?), by water (when we took a ferry in Istanbul to the Asian side of the city (which I promise I will finally write about after this trip and after I write about Thailand…so…December?), and now we’ve crossed into Asia by land. So fun! I was so ready to get off that train that my expectations for what kind of city to expect were super low, and I didn’t care. So I was surprised by how much I liked Yekaterinburg, at what a nice place it seemed like, with beautiful vistas and open spaces, good food, and a nice vibe. But, of course, it could just be because of the hotel.<\/div>\n
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<\/span>\"Picture\"<\/a>I love you Hotel Renomme<\/span><\/span> <\/p>\n

​Because we had just gotten off a 24-hour train journey with questionable hygiene, and because after 24 hours in Yekaterinburg we would be getting on a THREE DAY train to Irkutsk that would change my preconceived notions of how disgusting I myself could be, we booked one night in a fancy hotel instead of a hostel for the first time this whole trip. Treat yo self! The Hotel Renomme was a very charming, clean, lovely little boutique hotel right outside a metro station and a mall. We checked in, apologizing for how disgusting we were in their clean, beautiful space – we were literally Bert’s chimney sweepers when they break into Mr. & Mrs. Banks’s house. Then we were shown to a room that actually made me cry. It was so cute. Nothing out of the ordinary, but mine eyes have seen some shit lately. It was a lovely room, with a big clean oh how clean bed, a little sitting area with adorable chairs and a cute table, a dresser, a closet with a safe and a minibar (I forgot such things could exist!), and a little balcony with French doors that opened onto the loudest street noise you could ever imagine (a bar below played loud music all day and night) but it was still a dream. It was about 10pm, and despite how badly we wanted to shower in that gorgeous, clean, oh so clean bathroom with its actual living breathing shower (no showers on the trains….hell there’s barely sink water) and oh I was gonna wash my haaaaair — that had to wait because it was super late and we were really hungry so had to find food first before things closed. <\/div>\n
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ADORABLE matrioshka the bill came in<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
​The mall looked promising, open still, so we walked around trying to find something and looked at a few menus before finding literally my new favorite restaurant, Schastye, a Georgian restaurant on the top floor with an incredibly vegan-friendly menu, you can’t even believe. The menu had so many vegetables and interesting preparations too that I wanted to cry for the second time in one hour. We ordered several dishes, including a Georgian specialty green called jonjoli that was a little pickly and sharp and was really good. The menu extolled its nutrient dense properties. Oh the menu itself was hysterical – fashioned like a huge magazine with ‘articles’ on the cover highlighting different Georgian dishes. So fun and so big. The table also had the super weird matrioshka (above) on it, which we were like what. <\/div>\n
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the slightly pickly jonjoli<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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eggplant rolls<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
​We also had an eggplant rollup dish, with the eggplant filled with a walnut paste. It was really good, and came sprinkled with pomegranate seeds which I love. I had a salad, because I needed fresh vegetables too, and even though it was mostly cucumbers and tomatoes and that’s the only veg we can consistently find and I’m pretty sick of them, I didn’t even care, it was good and fresh and in some kind of great walnut-based dressing I don’t even know. Then, after working out with the waiter which of the fun breads could be veganized, (he was WONDERFUL with the veganness) I got my favorite thing, this roti-like flatbread baked with spinach and other greens inside. It was soo goooood why am I writing this I want that now! <\/div>\n

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​While Husband got a traditional dessert that he said was really good, I got a ginger lemonade over crushed ice that was perfectly gingery and burned my throat in that good gingery way. I really liked it even though I had forgotten that we’re not supposed to be drinking the water and the ice may have been made from tap water. It seemed like a nice enough restaurant that they wouldn’t voluntarily poison the customers though.<\/p>\n

It was such a great dinner. I love this restaurant! Who has ever found great Georgian vegan food in a random mall? After dinner, we went to the big supermarket in the basement and stocked up on water for the night. And I saw this glorious vision:<\/div>\n

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(i was so glad to see my old friend Alpro non-dairy milks, and in flavors I can\u2019t find even in london! unfortunately, without a fridge on the train and no small sizes, it didn\u2019t make sense to get a whole carton sad face)<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
After dinner, we dropped all our laundry at the front desk while begging them to do it by the next evening (they were so nice) and then took the longest showers in human history. My hair was so clean. I know this is boring and no one wants to hear about when we showered but we play by my rules here and also this hotel room and the bed and this shower and clean laundry were like the strongest argument I’ve ever known for that whole cleanliness is next to godliness business. <\/div>\n
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Yekat main square<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
​The next day, because we only had the one day in Ye old Katerinburg before catching the 3-day train that night, we booked a private tour guide. I knowww I know but we had things we wanted to see and that was the most effective way to do it. And it wasn’t super expensive either, and we both felt afterwards that it was 100% worth it. We booked through UralTerra and our guide Evgenia was excellent. She spoke the best English so far of anyone we’ve met, I think. She arrived with a car and driver and taught us so much about Yekaterinburg. We started by going to a central plaza that commemorates when the town was built, in 1723, and is right near the big city dam that was the most important thing leading to the city’s success. <\/div>\n
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Let’s find a rock…I mean a big ass rock <\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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damn<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
​When the dam was constructed, it could generate water-powered, um, power and so Yekaterinburg quickly became an industrial center, with factories all over its jawn. And its success and booming population generally lasted, with it now being one of the four biggest cities in Russia. <\/div>\n
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another church on more blood<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
​Next, we drove a few minutes to the Church on the Blood (if a Russian church isn’t about depositing a robe, it’s because it’s on blood), the site where the Romanovs were executed. We saw their tombs in St. Petersburg<\/a>, and now we saw where they were betrayed and executed. Heart don’t fail me now am I right. They were being hidden on the site for a long time, before Sverdlov, whom the city was named after for a short time because of this, ordered their execution. Apparently, the whole family was taken down to the basement and told it was for their safety, and then lined up in their family order and told it was because they wanted to take a photograph, but then Sverdlov and his team just shot them all, including the children. People are monsters. It gets worse. The girls had jewelry lining their corsets so that if they ever got out they would be able to pawn it to survive, but it meant that the bullets didn’t penetrate and they didn’t die right away so the worthless monsters used bayonets. It’s such a grim history, and later that day we’d learn even more horrific details. What’s really strange, though, is that the entire family was canonized as saints, in an attempt for the country to maybe to try to seek forgiveness for this very dark history. So in this cathedral, where all this terrible evil happened, everyone is praying to the Romanov saints. It is very strange, to make them saints because they suffered a horrible death, and a whole lot stranger for people to base their entire religious fervor on praying to them for the same reason. It just felt very odd. <\/div>\n
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Ganina Yama monastery<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
​After visiting the cathedral (no pictures allowed inside), we drove back to Europe (hi Europe!) to Ganina Yama (not to be confused with Goitery Yana (or Baba Yagga)), an absolutely stunning monastery with the most peaceful atmosphere and the freshest air I’ve breathed in weeks (no smoking! actually taken seriously!). This land was like a small piece of heaven in a forest, with beautiful wooden cathedrals and smaller churches and lovely pathways and everything so in tune with nature. I felt so calmed and so relaxed, which is a very rare thing. <\/div>\n
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The vast monastery land had tons of beautiful buildings, some of which were churches and some of which were just cafeterias<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
​And then I was told why we were at this monastery, and I no longer felt so peaceful. That and because I had to wear a headscarf borrowed from the site’s bag of public I-doubt-ever-washed headscarves and I thought I was getting lice. Um, so this is where, after the Romanovs were executed at the place we just left, their bodies were carted for a mass burial in an abandoned mine shaft (which we saw, pictured below). They were cut up and burned in this mine:<\/div>\n
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the pit of despair<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
​Some people were tried and executed for the deaths, but by the time it came to light that Sverdlov was the ringleader, politics had changed and instead of punishing him or ruining his name (he was already dead after all), they changed the name of Yekaterinburg to Sverdlovsk. Like…that’s not how you punish murderers, guys. Luckily the name is now back to being for Catherine and not some psycho child murderer. <\/div>\n
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The Romanov children<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
​It’s too bad this site is so beautiful, because knowing why it’s consecrated and revered is, again, very strange.<\/div>\n
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​Aside from all this horror, our guided tour of the area included what’s probably the highlight – the Asia-Europe border! So fun and silly!<\/div>\n
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“I’m on the EAST side, I’m on the WEST side! I’m on the one side, I’m on the other side!”<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
​It was so cool to have one foot in Asia and one in Europe! Even if the border line isn’t actually exact, it counts.<\/div>\n
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Over 4000 km to London! (faded one near the top)<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

<\/span>\"Picture\"<\/a>kind of weird right<\/span><\/span> <\/p>\n

The last stop on our tour, after we were briefly shown the new modern Boris Yeltsin Center and strongly urged to visit later for a much longer time (we would have if we had the time), was the Military Museum. It’s a small museum that doesn’t have much to it, but we wanted to go because it has a section about Gary Powers, the American pilot who was shot down in Yekaterinburg in 1960 — you know, the guy causing the trouble in “Bridge of Spies”! The guy traded for Mark Rylance, Greatest Actor of our Generation and Probably Most Others! So the movie\/Mark\/Hanks connection made me eager to see this. As it stands, it’s just a few pieces of his aircraft that they have displayed, plus some photos and a weird life-size mannequin of Gary in a uniform, sitting in a pilot’s seat. Errmkay! At first, the two people running the museum (no one else was there) told us that the Gary Powers stuff upstairs was ‘closed for renovation’, so we were like okay then peace out, that’s literally all we want in your museum, so then because we weren’t going to buy tickets they changed their minds and let us upstairs. So weird. Apparently most of the remnants of the crash are in Moscow, which we didn’t know, but I guess we saw enough. Made me want to watch a movie though. Three weeks without television so far! Ahh!<\/div>\n
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pieces of Powers’ aircraft in the Military Museum<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Another light and audio diorama presentation!! Russians love these! This was in Russian so did our best to just follow the flashing lights<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
​After our tour, we wandered around the city, brought provisions for the 3-day train and bought food and chocolate. We went into this famous candy shop called Alyonka and found some accidentally vegan bars! Yum!<\/div>\n
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We went into another giant grocery store in another giant mall to get canned beans and produce for the train (they love their big malls and fancy grociers in Yekat!), and I know I already shared a picture of the Alpro nondairy milks from the first store, but I have to share this store’s stock too, BECAUSE WTF IS SOYA FOR PROFESSIONALS??? <\/div>\n
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anyone? <\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
​If anyone knows what they mean by that, please tell me in the comments.<\/p>\n

​We also stopped in the famous Uralskiye Pelmeni, a restaurant with a cafeteria style vibe (very common all over Russia) that has amazing pelmeni, or meat dumplings, for husband. Little did I know I’d find some of my favorite food of the whole trip – this stewed (or braised) cabbage dish. Oh my goodness, this was so simple and more delicious than it had any right to be (and incredibly cheap). We fought over the last bites when we should have just gotten more. SO GOOD. I also had a little raw cabbage salad that was merely perfunctory for its rawness and vegness but tasted better than I needed it to. <\/p><\/div>\n

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best cabbage dish of all time OF ALL TIME<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
So, we had a grand day in Yekaterinburg. Maybe I was just so happy to be clean, short though it lasted. Maybe it was because the hotel was beautiful and they did our laundry for super cheap to apologize for an unrelated mixup. But I think the city itself just exceeded my (admittedly basement-level) expectations. It’s cosmopolitan, it has beautiful open spaces and paths along the river. There are at least two restaurants I would be happy eating at 100 times each. It seems like a nice place to live, at least compared to a lot of what we’ve seen east of the Urals. I think we saw all the things we had to see, in just one day, but it wouldn’t be terrible to spend more time there.<\/div>\n
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<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

​After the 24 hours on the train that you read about in the previous post, we had crossed the Europe-Asia border and landed in Yekaterinburg, capital […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7303,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[162],"tags":[186],"class_list":["post-7302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-travel-d1","tag-foodtravel"],"yoast_head":"\nYekaterinburg: Surprisingly Pleasant City, Though it Could Just Be the Hotel - Laughfrodisiac<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/laughfrodisiac.com\/2017\/07\/07\/yekaterinburg-surprisingly-pleasant-city-though-it-could-just-be-the-hotel-html-d1\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Yekaterinburg: Surprisingly Pleasant City, Though it Could Just Be the Hotel - 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