A lazy day. We walked eastwards to the town’s biggest shopping mall. The aim was to buy face cream (not for me) and Euro-2018 tee-shirts as presents. They were nearly £100 each so we didn’t bother. We then bought some grub from a supermarket, and walked northwards to the Theatre building which is said to be one of Astrakhan’s main attractions. Walked along Admiralteiskaya past the Kremlin, and noted a statue of a familiar-looking figure. Jennifer said “That looks like Lenin”, and it was Ilya Nikolaevich Ulyanov, Lenin’s father, who was born in Astrakhan. We then went up Ulitsa Sverdlova, named after Yakov Sverdlov who was the first Chairman of the Communist Party after the Bolshevik revolution. Born into a Jewish family in Nizhnyi Novgorod, he is alleged to have given the order for the execution of the Tsar. He had been interned by the Tsar in the same labour camp as Stalin. One of his brothers was adopted by Maxim Gorkii. We then walked along Ulitsa Kommunisticheskaya. We stopped at a supermarket and bought some more food, then took pics of a beautiful church which seems to have been recently renovated but was closed. Feeling knackered we walked back to the hotel having been just 2,000 feet short of the theatre. Will go there tomorrow.
