Traditional Russian Clothing

As I said a few posts back, we're approaching the year anniversary of our second and third trips to Russia.  The second trip, in August 2011, was when we had our court appearance, and also when we visited Elena in the baby house in Kotlas.

And, as I said in the previous post, Kotlas isn't exactly a tourist mecca.  But it is a mid-sized city, and there really are some interesting things to visit, if you have a few spare hours.  We pointed out some of them way back in this post.  But there are also places to go shopping.  We went to a few of them.  There are a series of souvenir stands at the train station; that's where we bought the little magnets in he picture below, as well as the matroyshka doll and wooden box you can see on the stand in the lower picture:

Souvenir magnets

Kotlas hotel, August 2011

There was also a really nice little bookstore just a couple blocks from the hotel.  It had a good selection of nice children's books, and astonishingly low prices. 

Finally, there was a clothing store literally next door to the hotel.  We browsed through the kid's clothes, and wound up buying a couple things.  One was a little overall dress with Russian-themed embroidery; unfortunately, Elena quickly outgrew it.  The other was a traditional heavy Russian shirt.  Since it's been chilly the last few days, we've pulled it out; it still fits Elena.  Here she is wearing it:

Bad news indeed: August 2012.

The little patch says "vintage apple & smile."  The inner tag is labeled with Chinese characters.