Day 7 Monday 6/5

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 on board with regular ship activities, which included lectures on the Romanov dynasty, eating and drinking followed by more eating and drinking. There is no gym on this ship so hopefully we can do more walking tomorrow.