The following morning, after breakfast in the dining room of our guesthouse which felt very much like a Russian canteen – pink meat, cheese triangles and extremely dubious tasting salty porridge – we made our way to the big draw in Suzdal, the Kremlin. Many Russian towns have kremlins, it’s not just specific to Moscow (kremlin meaning a fortress within a city usually containing the seat of power and important religious buildings). The Kremlin in Suzdal is much older than that in Moscow, though most of the surrounding walls are gone and now just low earth banks give an idea of how large it was. After the previous evening’s peace and tranquility, the busy, touristy surrounds at this end of the town were a bit of a shock. Gone were the attractive, traditional wooden houses and flower gardens, we now had the modern equivalent lining the streets packed with fast food and gimmicky souvenirs along with horse drawn carriages bedecked with fluorescent plumage, scary looking Russian women drivers and forlorn-looking small horses wearing pink tulle skirts and strapped-on unicorn horns. Not really our kind of thing.