Moscow to Suzdal - August 8, 2015

Today was destined to be a huge traffic day.  We gathered by the motorcycles behind the hotel for a morning briefing.  

Today’s ride is short, only 230km (145 miles).

We say goodbye to Hotel Petr I at 10 am, a few hours later then normal to avoid the traffic as people leave Moscow on Saturday morning to go to their dachas for the weekend.

Our first stop was Red Square to line up the bikes for a picture - hopefully without getting arrested!

We rode right onto the square, with no "official" attention.

Right to left, Steve, John (lead guide), Marilyn, Alex, Alain, and Jeff

Success.  We’re able to get as many pictures as we like.  Once they understood we only wanted pictures and not parking, the guards left us alone.  Svetlana lives in Moscow and intervenes well!  She also takes great pictures.

Look at Mike in his red white and blue suit – almost reminds us of a superhero.

As we leave Red Square we notice someone has had an early morning mishap…

And someone has an attitude in English.  On a Prius?

John and Svetlana are having fun as they lead the group out of the city.

Not far from our hotel we ran into bad weekend traffic.  So we resorted to…

Lane splitting...

wave to Janis, our guide in the group's white support van...

riding on the left hand shoulder…

Riding on the right hand shoulder and at times the sand shoulder of the right hand shoulder…

And when all else failed – riding in the opposing traffic lane.  WOW.  We did this for many miles.  Thank goodness the opposing drivers saw us coming and gave way.  We were riding 40 miles per hour, passing stopped traffic to our right, hoping the guys coming at us at 60 would move over.  Only one played "chicken" until the last moment!

And with all of this we had to constantly be aware of the pedestrian cross walks across the highway.  People just start walking across the road, and drivers need to be alert enough to come to a stop from 50 or 60 miles per hour.

We eventually made our way into somewhat quieter traffic in a more rural area.  Note the truck here "giving way" to our co-rider who is passing on a two-lane road.  It is fairly standard here for motorycles to be allowed to split between cars, ride on the shoulders, and be given preference.  For example, at traffic signals, we generally "filter" around waiting cars, to the front of the line.  It is nerve-wracking for me, but Dave and the other riders have no problem with these maneuvers.  

Who remembers stopping at roadside picnic tables while traveling in the family car?  They still do in Russia. It's a little blurry, but all along the road there are small pavilions with picnic tables.  Families just pull over beside the road, and put out their lunch.

Towards the end of today's ride we went through a cute entrance gate into the  quaint little village of Suzdal with lots of dachas and…

horse drawn carriages for hire.

We stayed just outside of Suzdal because the town was celebrating their 991st anniversary and the lodging was mostly booked.

Because of this, we were unable to walk around the town.  We did see the church lit up at night.  It was beautiful.

When we pulled up to the reception area of our hotel, we drove by a wedding party.  The little girl was cute, but obviously a tom boy at heart.

She wanted to climb the rock in her white dress.

Again, we stayed in a resort complex, so once we got by the Stalinistic security guard, we drove into the complex and found our building.  At first we couldn't find our way in because the parking area is in the back. We tried every door we saw, thinking it was the front side. Dave and I gave up and went to lunch.

Afterwards, we found our room, and the luggage arrived sooner than anticipated.


The hotel shuttle drove us to our restaurant for the evening meal.

Check out the light fixtures.  The town is known for producing honey liquor and horseradish vodka.  The former was okay, if a little sweet;  the later could only be stomached by Janis and Alain.  Alain was feeling it the next morning.

Dinner was good, and the evening's entertainment was a trip highlight.

A Russian folk troupe was the evening's entertainment.  It took a while, but everyone was eventually clapping and stomping along.  A few of us even got pulled into the festivities. Some danced with members of the group.  I wound up "dancing" with Steve.  I couldn't make out what the song was about, but I had a wreath of flowers on my head, and Steve was put into the most ridiculous outfit.

Then one of the musicians came out with a spoon apron.  It sounds ridiculous, but this guy was amazing and the music was charming.

Mike is always the life of the party.  He may have fallen in love with our waitress, Tatiana.

After this vodka-fueled spectacle I was ready to head back to the lodge for the night!

Tomorrow we will ride through the countryside with less traffic, have our first extended foray on a dirt road, cross the Volga river twice, and end up in the ancient town of Nizhniy Novgorod.