After Svir Stroi, we continued up the Svir River into Onega Lake, then north to the northernmost point of our trip, Kizhi. Kizhi Island is a World Heritage Site. Kizhi is just north of 62 degrees, and it was cold there, only 43°F. I took pictures of the historic wooden church as we sailed in, but this picture from the internet is far better than any that I took. Also as we sailed in I heard the bells in the bell tower (not in this picture) being played and made a short video of part of it.
We didn’t get to Kizhi until after lunch. This was the first place where we experienced parallel docking. The dock at Kizhi is the length of one riverboat. When we arrived there were already three riverboats at the dock, lashed to each other in parallel. We docked in fourth position, so going ashore we had to cross the lobbies of three other ships.
Considering the temperature I considered not going ashore, but I’d already skipped Svir Stroi and had spent nearly a whole day in Saint Petersburg on the ship, so I broke out the scarf and gloves Adrianne so thought fully packed for me and went on the tour. The structures are splendid. That church with all of those onion domes is made entirely of wood, including the shingles on the onion domes. There is also a bell tower, and we were regaled with a bell concert. The bell ringer has a cord to each bell which he holds in one hand to ring the bells. The bell ringer was inside the bell tower and we couldn’t see how he was working the cords, but I couldn’t believe that one man could create the concert we heard even with two hands. (At a later port stop we got to see how it is done, and I have a movie. I am now a believer.)
When we got back to the Tikhi Don the three ships we had had to cross to get ashore were gone, so we entered our ship directly from the dock without having to cross through other ships. The ship staff met us with a hot beverage, quite welcome after having walked around for two hours in the cold.
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