What a short, largely uneventful trip it's been...

Apologize for the lack of posts of late, but hopefully this long one will make up for it. I even wrote it in advance so that Blogger won't be able to delete it (although it will certainly try.)
Two Fridays ago, we got on the overnight train to Vladimir. This made the overnight train I’d taken in Russia five years ago seem like the Grand Hotel Europe by comparison. Rather than the expected individual compartments with four beds each, the 30 of us got a train wagon lined with impossibly narrow bunks. We hung out and talked for a while, but eventually it came time to sleep. It was here that I learned a valuable lesson about overnight trains: I can’t sleep on them. The noise and the movement and the uncomfortable bedding combined with the paranoia that someone was going to take advantage of the doorless situation and steal my bag made for a joyless five hours of listening to music, lying in bed with my eyes half-open and making a huge show of being awake every time someone walked past my bunk.
We arrived in Vladimir Saturday morning at around 6 am. We had about three hours to sleep before our grand tour of the city. So, uh, this is Vladimir:

If by any chance you have a cathedral fetish, come to Vladimir. You will not be disappointed. Those pictures represent exactly half of the cathedrals we visited that day.
Actually, that one in the middle by the lake was fun, if only because in order to get to it, we had to walk through an enormous, goat-filled field on an impossibly warm and sunny day. It was gorgeous to the point that I would have burst into song if it weren’t for the complete lack of sleep.
Well, shit. I wrote about Suzdal and Moscow, complete with pictures, and Blogger deleted everything after Vladimir when I tried to publish. I can't do this now. Expect more, shorter posts as soon as humanly possible.