Yaroslavl - June 11th

As we neared Moscow the cities began to be larger. Yaroslavl is a city of about 600,000 people. It was founded in 1010, so its 1000th anniversary is coming up in two years. Yaroslavl was founded on the site of an earlier pagan village. The legend is that the pagans kept a bear in a cage and worshipped it as the progenitor of humankind. When the Russian’s arrived they challenged the pagans, and the bear was killed with a battleaxe. The emblem of the city is a standing bear with a battleaxe on it’s shoulder.

It was a very comfortable day in Yaroslavl – around 70 degrees – and we were again in a city big enough that we were encountering wedding parties just as we had in Saint Petersburg.We saw perhaps a dozen brides being photographed at the same scenic points that we were visiting.

It was also in Yaroslavl that we saw a bell performance outside the Savior-Transfiguration Monastery. I was stunned at how the bell ringer controlled all but one of the bells with the fingers of his left hand. Only the largest bell was controlled by his right hand.

I made a video of part of this performance but my “P.H.D.” camera (Push here, dummy!) doesn’t do a great job of videos. I believe that one member of our tour videotaped it. If that video shows up on YouTube I’ll add a reference to it here.

Goritsi - June 10th

Our tour description didn’t include any stops on the 9th day, but after we left Kizhi Island we were told that a stop at Goritsi had been added. Goritsi is best known for the Kirillo-Belosersky Monastery which was founded by Ivan the Terrible.

This was also the day that those who wished to could paint their own Matreshka. Matreshkas are Russian nested dolls. The ship’s gift shop had Matreshkas for sale with as few as five nested dolls, and as many as 26. Obviously when there are that many dolls the smallest is tiny and the largest is quite a bit larger than Matreshkas with fewer nested dolls, but the quality of the work is also important. The larger sets were also tighter fitting, that is, each doll had thinner walls, and the smaller doll just fit with minimum room to spare into the next larger doll.

Adrianne painted a "blank" doll, that is, one with a printed outline but otherwise unpainted, and then over the course of the evening decorated it with snippets from such things as candy labels which she glued on using hair gel – we hadn’t thought to bring along a tube of proper glue. The next day all the dolls painted by passengers were on display and we were invited to vote for the prettiest. I voted several times for Adrianne’s doll, but she didn’t win. The winning doll was one of the few painted by a male passenger.

Khizi Island - June 9th

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.

Svir Strio - June 8th

We had splendid weather while in Saint Petersburg. The temperature was in the mid-60s to low 70s every day, and the weather was, at worst, partly cloudy. June is “White Nights” time in Saint Petersburg, which is only about 6 degrees, 30 minutes south of the Arctic Circle. Sunset was after 11 PM, and Sunrise was just after 4 AM, but it never really got dark at night. There was always a white glow in the sky. Just as June weddings are popular here, June weddings, and especially “White Night” weddings are popular in Russia. Whereas we almost always have weddings on weekends, the Russians will marry on any day of the week. Everywhere we went in Saint Petersburg we were apt to run into a bride and groom running around to be photographed at the same cathedrals and palaces that we were visiting. Many of the couples hired limousines to take them about. I even spotted a recent model stretched Lincoln among them. Gasoline is graded differently in Russia than here. Their lowest grade is “80”, which I presume means 80 octane, whereas our lowest grade is 87 octane. Just like here the price varies from one gas station to the next, but typically was on the order of 25 rubles per liter which is the equivalent of around $4 a gallon – for 80 octane fuel.

Sunday morning we awoke in the middle of Lake Ladoga, but soon entered the Svir River. We were sailing upstream all the way to Moscow, and would eventually go through 18 or 19 locks, being elevated at all but one of them. Shortly after the first lock we docked at the town of Svir Stroi. It’s not a city – more like a village. It was much cooler here than in Saint Petersburg – perhaps not even 60 degrees, and rain threatened. The weather did not appeal to me, so I stayed on the ship. Those who went ashore were treated to a home visit – well, actually several homes since there were so many people, and visits were in two shifts to each home. The visitors enjoyed tea and piroshki, quintessential Russian pastries. Here’s a picture of Adrianne with her hostess.

One of the local crafts is articles made from birch bark. Adrianne bought two small birch bark boxes, which are somewhat reminiscent of shaker boxes.

Saint Petersburg - June 7th

Saturday began with a bus ride into Saint Petersburg for more sightseeing. We visited the Peter & Paul Fortress, within whose walls is the Peter & Paul Cathedral. Peter the Great and all the Russian emperors and empresses are buried there, including the last of the Romanovs, Nicholas and Alexandra and their children – well actually the remains of the last two children have only recently been identified and will be buried there next year.

Elaborate Russian Orthodox churches and cathedrals make up a significant fraction of things to be seen in Russia. We also spent time at St. Isaac’s Cathedral. The dome of St. Isaac’s dominates the Saint Petersburg skyline – it is the largest church in the city – and it is decorated with a huge amount of gold (about 200 pounds of gold leaf – that’s a lot of surface area!), huge mosaics, lapis lazuli and malachite, and – as in all Russian Orthodox churches – lots and lots of icons.

After lunch we were supposed to take a hydrofoil ride to Peterhof – the summer palace of Russian royalty, but there was an economic conference in Saint Petersburg and the hydrofoils were banned from the Neva River as a security measure. We went to Peterhof by bus. I was a bit disappointed, as I’d been looking forward to the hydrofoil ride. But Peterhof was definitely not a disappointment. There are around 150 fountains on the grounds and dozens of gilded statues. Consider that this entire area was laid to waste in 1944 by the retreating German Army after the 900-day Siege of Leningrad (the Soviet-era name for Saint Petersburg). Many of the sculptures and fountains had to be recreated from photographs. My favorite fountain, and one of the oldest, has four bronze ducks on a rotating frame. Water squirts from their mouths, and somehow the water makes a quacking sound. It’s not a big fountain, and it’s not centrally located, but it’s my favorite. This fountain was saved from being despoiled by burying it under a pile of dirt.

It occurred to me that if Peterhof were in the United States, it would probably be an adults-only attraction. Many of the statues have “naughty bits”, and the perverts who govern us would either drape the statues, alter them (heaven forbid), or restrict attendance. How sad!

On Saturday evening, during dinner, we left Saint Petersburg and sailed up the Neva River toward Lake Ladoga, the largest lake (by area) in Europe.

Saint Petersburg - June 6th

Friday began with an optional tour of Yusupov Palace, where Rasputin was murdered in 1916. That event ultimately triggering the collapse of the Russian Empire. Adrianne and I took the opportunity to rest. We had decided long in advance that we needed to pace ourselves on this cruise. On Friday afternoon there was an included tour of The St. Petersburg Music Boarding School, which enjoys the support of the Grand Circle Foundation. Adrianne, being a teacher, couldn’t miss it, but I was still recovering from jet lag and skipped it, so I had the entire day off. Adrianne thoroughly enjoyed the music school and took lots and lots of pictures. Other passengers mentioned it as one of the highlights of the cruise. My cruise highlight came the next day.

Saint Petersburg - June 5th

Grand Circle divided the roughly 200 passenger complement of the MS Tikhi Don into six ‘color’ groups, each with our own program director (P.D.). Tikhi Don (Тихий Дон in Cyrillic) is named for a Stalin-era novel by Mikhail Sholokhov. Our green group P.D., Nadia Radaeva, managed to find us before dinner on Wednesday night to welcome us to the ship. We had missed the first day of the tour which included a visit to The Hermitage Museum, and that was an important part of our visit to Saint Petersburg. We asked Nadia if there was anything we could do about that, and we mentioned that the Kleinfields were in the same situation (but they were sorted into the purple group). At dinner, Nadia found us and told us the good news and the bad news. The following afternoon was an open time, and she had arranged for a guide to take the Kleinfields and us to The Hermitage Museum. The bad news was that since our delay wasn’t Grand Circle’s fault, they wouldn’t provide transportation. We had to take a 20 minute ride on the Metro to get there! (A taxi could take an hour to get there at mid-day.) Our guide would meet us at the ship at about 2:30.

Thursday began with an optional tour of Catherine’s Palace which lasted for the morning. We were back on the ship for lunch. I won’t describe Catherine’s Palace here because my description wouldn’t measure up to the excellent description on Wikipedia (click on the link above). The purple group’s bus broke down on the way back from Catherine’s Palace, and the Kleinfields were not pleased (to put it mildly) with how their P.D. handled the situation. By evening they had been moved to the green group at their own request.

After lunch our Hermitage Guide, Ksenia Belous, met us at the ship and we went by Metro to The Hermitage Museum. I again defer to Wikipedia’s excellent description of the museum, but Wikipedia doesn’t have a page about our guide, and I cannot say enough about her. Partly because we were a group of only five, but mostly because we were guided by Ksenia, we really felt like we got a first class tour of The Hermitage Museum. As we were finishing the trip her boyfriend met us all outside The Hermitage and drove us back to the ship. That was the only way he was going to get to see Ksenia that evening, and I must say that I don’t blame him for going out of his way to get to spend time with her. The only downside ( if you want to call it that) was that I brought home two Saint Petersburg Metro tokens at the end of the trip.