Church upon the Blood rises over Yekaterinburg’s City Pond
Frolicking around the lovely and lively City Pond
After a long day (and night) of travel we landed in Yekaterinburg yesterday. That means we have left Siberia and are now in the Ural region, which straddles the continents of Asia and Europe. Yekaterinburg is on the Asian side of the Ural mountains, making this our last stop before we cross into Europe.
Yekaterinburg was truly the last stop for the last tsar, Nicholas II, and his family. After our arrival here yesterday afternoon, we visited the Church upon the Blood, which was built to commemorate the spot where the family was massacred with rifles and bayonets in a basement in 1918. We also visited an exhibition of watercolors by Nicholas’ sister, the Grand Duchess Olga, who escaped just before the revolution and spent most of her life in Denmark. Her work was prolific and quite impressive.
Then we spent the rest of the afternoon walking around the lovely City Pond (seems more like a lake) at the center of the city. What a pleasant city! Today we plan to visit a spot on the European/Asian ‘border’ and get some kind of an awesome ‘standing on two continents’ kind of photo.
Church upon the Blood