2017 Russia

We started the day with a trip to the Kremlin, which refers to the walled area of the old city. It encompasses 70 acres. Within it are several churches and many government buildings, including Putin’s office. Since he lives in the suburbs, he comes to work by helicopter. We visited churches and heard about hundreds of icons ad nauseam. After the tour, we left the group and visited the famous department store “GUM”. Most people just go in there to look at the opulent stores and beautiful architecture, but hardly anybody shops. We had lunch in the famous Stalovaya #57, a Soviet-style (nostaligic for the Russians) cafeteria, which was full of both Russians and foreigners. Then we walked Moscow neighborhood for several hours. We came across the biggest and most famous Russian banya (Russian baths) – Sandunovskiye Bani. From the front, it is a huge, elegant building that takes the entire block, but from the back you can see the baths. When we were passing by the side entrance, we saw a n...

No tours. After breakfast, we walked to the nearest metro station (Rechnoy Vokzal) and went downtown. The walk to the metro took about 15 minutes, through two parks with families, kids, dogs enjoying their weekend activities. The metro was not crowded. We got off at Mayakovskaya and started our walk tracing the places from one of Bo’s favorite novels “Master and Margarita” by Bulgakov, which is set in Moscow in the 1930s. Bo printed a map of all the places and their addresses, but we still had to ask directions a few times, and once we had to use Google maps. The best part was that almost all the places were in a very beautiful part of old Moscow, in Arbat, with lovely little streets lined with amazing buildings, neighborhood parks, small cafes, posh shops, etc. People were out, cafes were full… We got to fully appreciate the life of the city and its atmosphere. We stopped at a local branch of the Moscow Museum of Modern art and visited exhibitions of two contemporary Russian artists...

Impressions of Moscow from day 11 and 12. Amazing city. The wealth here is very noticeable. More billionaires here than anywhere else. Lots of big beautiful cars – Cadillac, Mercedes, Bentley, Maybach. Big very wide streets, and lots of beautiful, renovated historical buildings from different periods. Even the Stalin-era buildings look amazing with a fresh coat of nicely-colored paint. The cleanliness is unreal – automated washing of the streets and sidewalks. The metro is beautiful and efficient – train every 40 seconds. We took a city tour which included the metro, the Red Square and the part of Moscow called Sparrow Hills, which is the highest point in Moscow and has the best view of the city. That’s also where Moscow State University is located and where many prominent people, including Medvedev, live. Our tour guide, Victoria, was amazing at herding 29 mostly geriatric folks through three metro stations and two trains with multiple stops for explanations and pictures witho...

Uglich. We arrived early and opted to not take any tours. The city is small and we decided to walk it ourselves. We went to innumerable churches and two monasteries - one for men and one for women. There are many picturesque churches with many onion domes, some blue, some green, some gold. Each color has its significance. The number of domes also has its meaning. The oldest part of Uglich, the Kremlin, which actually means a complex of churches and fortifications, includes a lovely church of St. Dmitry on the Blood, which was built in the 1690 on the spot where 9 year old tsarevich Dmitry was killed. Uglich is a very picturesque and quaint little town of about 35,000. It has no industry apart from a watch manufacturing plant Chayka, cheese production and tourism. It’s a mixture of traditional wooden Russian houses, a few post-communist structures, new dachas some newly constructed hotels and apartment buildings. We were to meet Andrey, a choir director from Moscow with whom Bo wo...

We have had no internet access in the past 4 days. We sailed through the Rybinskiy reservoir and then along the Volga river until 12:30 pm when we stopped in the middle of the river and were met by a refueling ship. We were scheduled to be in Yaroslavl at 3 pm so we thought it was far. Turns out we were there but had to wait for space to dock. Once we did, we went on a tour of the city. Our first stop was the governor’s house. What a waste of time. Out of 3.5 hours of the tour, we spent over an hour there looking at portraits of prominent citizens and listening to music played by local amateurs. Yaroslavl city center is a UNESCO heritage site mostly because of its plethora of beautiful churches and the oldest theater in Russia. We only managed to see one of them, the Church of Elijah the Prophet, which was built in 1647 and has some of the best preserved interiors in Russia with amazing frescoes and icons. It consists of two parts – the summer church – much bigger and more ornate, and...

This route takes us through 7 locks. They are large enough for several ships and efficient. We visited a small town of Kuzino, which would not be of any interest if they didn’t have one of the largest monasteries in Russia. It was built in 14th through 17th centuries, and at its peak it had 11 churches and over 200 monks. It was also used as a fortification that resisted Polish and Lithuanian invasion after they took Moscow. During communist times, they were lucky because the monastery was not turned into storage or prison, but into a museum. That’s how it survived – deteriorated but not devastated. We painstakingly viewed hundreds of icons but they all looked the same to me (Al’s opinion only). The best part of this visit was the local tour guide, Marina, who was wildly enthusiastic and exceedingly proud about every detail of this venue. Then we went to a local school. It was quite impressive that this small village has a nice large facility. Kids were prepped to give tours to...

Early in the morning, we stopped a Kizhi island on Lake Onega. This is our northern most stop – in the province of Karelia, which was once a part of Finland and is only 300 km from the Arctic Circle. The reason for this stop is the open air museum of traditional wooden architecture, which includes several old wooden churches. The biggest and most elaborate was built in 1714 and is entirely made of wood. There are also some peasant houses, a windmill, a chapel and a bunch of souvenir shops, of course. Again, we were not alone here. There were two Russian ships in this small harbor as well. The setting of this reserve is beautiful and the tour was really interesting and very pleasant. This time the weather cooperated and it was almost sunny, and relatively warm – in the 40s, but no wind. They told us that on the previous cruise in early May they had to cross the lakes following an ice breaker and they couldn’t stop at Kizhi at all because everything was frozen. The rest of the day was ...

We stopped at a village/settlement of Mandrogy. The actual village was destroyed in WW2 but an entrepreneur recreated it. In addition to the numerous souvenir shops there were many artisan craft making places – jewelry, embroidery, painting, woodworking, blacksmith, etc. We were not the only ship that stopped there. There were about 3-4 others, most of them Russian river cruises. We asked our crew about the companies that cover this route, and we were told that Viking is the only foreign company that does it, but there are several Russian companies that do it as well. There used to be some international companies before, but they were driven out of the competition by Viking. Russian tourists seem to enjoy this “fake” village more than foreigners, it seemed. They were riding in horse-driven carriages, buying lots of souvenirs, including pirozki stuffed with different local fruits, or cheeses or meats. We tried a blueberry one and it was delicious. We walked around the village, stopp...

At 8 am, we took the excursion bus to Peterhof, the site of Peter’s castle. The little town, which was incorporated into the city of SP after the fall of communism, is very pretty - with beautiful buildings and parks -- and immaculate. The castle was built by Peter the Great (he was 6 ft 8) in the 18th century initially as a stopping place on the way to his shipyard. It was later enlarged and remodeled by his successors. The palace was badly damaged by the Nazis but has been restored. The grounds are immense, meticulously maintained and adorned with 150 different and very fancy fountains. The water is powered by gravity from a hill 60 meters high and about 10 km away from the palace. We were very lucky because unlike the previous sites, the palace was not crowded at all. We were one of only 3 groups there so the tour was relaxed and leisurely. After strolling through the beautiful park along the gulf of Finland (in freezing cold wind), we left the tour and took a hydrofoil back to ...

About St. Petersburg. On 40 islands with 340 bridges. The metro is very deep – 300 ft. Weather is terrible. There are 2 seasons – July and winter or green winter and white winter. This morning we went to Tsarskoye Selo in the village of Puskin to see Katherine’s summer palace, and there was snow on the ground and we froze and there were snow flurries. We should have brought winter clothing. The palace started as a small cottage – Katherine’s gift to her husband Peter the great. Now it’s a huge baroque palace after all the improvements done by their daughter Elizabeth and Katherine the Great. We got there right at the opening time at 9:30 am and the place was very crowded with dozen of tour groups from everywhere, including lots of Chinese tourists. On the way to the palace, they had a couple of veteran groups playing traditional Russian music, a nice touch. After touring the inside, we also walked through the gardens, which would be a pleasure under normal circumstances, but not i...

Excursion to Hermitage. Hermitage is actually 3 palaces together: the Winter Palace of the Tzars, the Little Hermitage built by Catherine I and embellished by her daughter Elizabeth, and New Hermitage built as a museum. It’s a huge museum/structure visited by 20,000 people each day so it gets very crowded. The museum supposedly has over a million objects so it would take years to see all of them. It has a large collection of artifacts from antiquity and an extensive western painting collection from 17th , 18th, and 19th centuries. Unfortunately, there is almost no Russian art in the Hermitage, which was very disappointing. For Russian art you have to go to a separate museum…We also had to wait about 10 minutes to cross the street because there is international economic forum taking place in St. Petersburg right now and the street was closed for the motorcade of some VIPs, potentially Putin himself. The bus ride there through the city was very picturesque. The architecture of the Herm...