Kremlin and on to Italy

Photos: A couple views within the Kremlin
Oct 1
Today we were back on the bus for a Kremlin tour. (FYI: kremlin means fortress.) We stood in the ridiculous security line and then got into the “armory” of the Kremlin which is the building that houses all the artifacts of dynasties dating back centuries. It had the clothing of all the tsars and tsarinas, crowns carriages, jewels, Faberge eggs, gifts of precious items given as gifts by foreign countries, etc. Very interesting museum with far more to see than we had time to see. We had a very knowledgable guide that was able to provide us with the high points. I’m sure you could spend hours and hours and still not see everything that there is to see. Outside, we saw all the buildings included within the Kremlin and saw a parade that is done every Sat. We went inside the Church of the Assumption (full of frescoes), the church where all the tsars were crowned even when the capital was in St. Petersburg. After the Kremlin, we went to Arbat St, a pedestrian street with lots of shops where we got to buy our souvenirs. The weather was not the best…cold with periods of VERY cold wind and rain. The evening was our farewell dinner held at a restaurant in the hotel. Tomorrow: Italy!
Oct 2
Pretty much a wasted day. Slept in, had breakfast, packed and hung around waiting to leave. It was cold, rainy and windy outside and we just couldn’t get up the energy to go out in it. Left early for the airport waiting for our flight to Rome. Alitalia seved a meal that was the best meal we had had in 2 weeks and….keep in mind it was airline food. Wine was definitely the best we’d had since leaving home. Italy, here we come.

Moscow day 2

Photos: Elegant grocery store; inside GUM; Starbuck's in Cyrillic


Sept 30
Yay!!! A day without busses, lectures, guides. A totally free day in Moscow. Our hotel is located on one of the major streets in Moscow so it is very convenient to everything. We spent the day walking, walking, walking. We went back to Red Square, took another look at Lenin’s tomb, checked out the most elegant grocery store we have ever seen, spent a little more time in GUM where I got to have ice cream. We went to Tchaikovsky hall with the intention of getting tickets for a Bach cello concert but it turned out that the concert was a Bach organ concert which we declined. We found an Armenian grocery where we did a bit of shopping. Checked out the Moscow version of Draeger’s at GUM and picked up a few things there. We had read of a Russian restaurant that we valiantly tried to find without success, then tried a recommended seafood restaurant that was closed for a private party and finally gave up and had dinner at an Italian restaurant where we had a decent pizza. Overall, a good day!

Moscow

Photos: Large building is GUM department store. Statue is a famous Russian comedian whose dog died a few days after he died and is memorialized in cemetery where the most famous of Russians are buried. Elaborate cathedral is St. Basil's in red square.

Sept 29.
This morning we sat at anchor n the Moscow canal for several hours waiting to come into port at Moscow. We arrived at 1PM after having a box lunch on board and went on a bus tour of Moscow. Moscow is a very appealing city with beautiful onion dome cathedrals everywhere, historic buildings and statues and all mixed into a gigantic typical city scene. We saw most of the major sites from the bus with stops at New Maiden Convent, still a very active religious training center and the Novodevichy cemetery that is part of the convent which is the burial place of Moscow’s elite. Political leaders who die after leaving office are buried there as well as very famous Muscovites like Tchaikovsy, Shostakovich, Chekov, Khruschev, Yeltsin, Raisa Gorbachev, comic Yuri Nikulin, etc. The monuments make it the most impressive cemetery that we have ever seen. Then a stop at Red Square. The word “red” means beautiful in Russian so our definition was never the intended name of the square. It’s a tremendously picturesque square with the spectacular St. Basil Cathedral at one end, Lenin’s tomb and the gigantic Gum department store. GUM= government universal magasin (shop.) It’s a gorgeous building that actually amounts to a mall with zillions of stores inside, many of them branches of all the very expensive and exclusive stores of Europe. It’s 3 floors, many cafes and (hurray) free bathrooms. We wandered all around Red Square and GUM and had a late lunch/early dinner at a kind of cafeteria on the 3rd floor that had typical Russian fare at reasonable prices. We also took a metro ride for 2 stops so that we could see a couple of very interesting stations and also have the experience of riding the Moscow subway. T he stations are impressive. One was the revolution station that has beautiful bronze statues in tribute to soldiers, one of which has his dog memorialized in bronze. It’s a Moscow good luck tradition to rub the dog’s nose which is polished bright gold by all the hands that touch it. We were leaving for the hotel at about 6PM for a ride that is a 15 min walk. We got to the hotel shortly before 7:30. Surely this was the worst traffic I have EVER seen. No particular event, just TRAFFIC!! Unbelievable traffic! They gave us a welcome glass of wine at the hotel….by then we needed much more than that. The good news: our room at the Marriott was gorgeous and huge. Our entire cabin on the ship could fit into our bathroom at the Marriott. The bad news: internet charges are $10/hr. No blogging at the Marriott will be occurring.

Sept 28, Uglich

Photos are of our kasha; pretty red church in Uglich; our breakfast hostess. (I can't control the order of photos.)

Sept 28
Today we disembarked in Uglich, a town of about 35,000, where we divided into small groups to go to the home of a local hostess who fed us breakfast. There were 6 in our group. Our home was a very modest house with lots of knick knack type clutter. Our hostess spoke no English so we were forced to use sign language and our recently learned 12 words of Russian. We had a porridge called kasha, which is apparently a generic word for any kind of porridge. It was really delicious but we have no idea what it was made of. Our guide thought it was perhaps millet from our description. We also had blinis with homemade raspberry-strawberry jam, bread with cheese and sausage and tea of a generic tea bag sort. Overall a lovely breakfast. Our hostess was very warm and welcoming. She enjoyed having pictures taken with each of us and asked us to send her copies (snail mail…..that should be interesting since she gave us her address written in Cyrillic.) We walked though Uglich and went to the Church of St. Dimitry on the Spilled Blood, so named because it was the site of the murder of the child, Dimitry, a son of Ivan the Terrible. He was murdered so that he couldn’t take the throne allowing Boris Godunov to become tsar.
Fairy tales are a huge part of Russian culture. The poems of Pushkin provide many of the fairy tales. Laquered boxes of Russia depict scenes from the fairy tales and all Russian children are told the tales. This afternoon we were told fairy tales. It was surprisingly entertaining. The tales were told by the same guide who taught us Russian language lessons and also gave part of the history. She did a great job on the fairy tales.

Goritsy; Yaroslavl

So the photos: The one of me and Dick is in the park in Yaroslavl where a merchant had come up with his display that involved this reflective cube. The gold domed church is in Yaroslavl with a monument to WWII casualties. The produce display is in a market in Yaroslavl. The other photo is the monastery at Goritsy.

Sept 26
Visited the town of Goritsy, a tiny settlement near a very famous monastery, the Kirillo-Beloserky Monastery, originally founded in 1397 by Kirill (Cyril), a monk who was later canonized. Kyrill is also responsible for the Cyrillic alphabet, bless his heart. Nearby is a remains of a convent. Apparently, one of the main functions of nunneries was to get rid of bothersome women including wives that you were tired of. Divorce was not a possibility so the options were poisoning or banishment to the convent. Ivan the Terrible banished the mother of a rival to the nunnery to prevent her interfering in his rule. He also had 7 wives, many who died under mysterious circumstances. At least one went to the convent. The monastery is huge and contains many valuable iconographic art works, vestments and documents dating back as far as the 14th century. Hated our guide who droned on and on. The good news was that it didn’t rain but was cold and windy so once again we had on all the clothing we brought .
We had a lecture on Russian history this morning, speaking of going on and on. Interesting but FAR tooooo loooong. Also had a talk on Russian tea drinking with demonstration of how a samovar works and then a tasting of pirogis (both fruit and meat pirogis) and tea.


Sept 27
Today we had another Russian history lesson covering the 20th century to present. Not as long, interesting. It’s good NOT to have lived in Russia for much of the last 1300 years. We also had another Russian lesson and learned some Russian songs. We are easily entertained while on the ship. Even Dick sang!
The afternoon was spent in the city of Yaroslavl, the town where there was the recent crash of the plane with all the ice hockey players. Yaroslavl is a large city of something like 600,000 that was the capital of Russia for a brief period in ancient times. We had a city tour including another monastery and a couple more churches……all of which have blended together in my mind and when I look at the photographs I will have no idea which is which. We had some free time and walked through a large flea market and also a grocery that may have been some sort of coop. There were multiple places for buying meats, or fish, or produce. The produce was arranged beautifully as were dried fruits and spices. A small park had cute flower displays with a variety of accompanying objects set up by local merchants. Kinda fun to walk through.

Mandrogi; Kizhi Island

The photo with the horses is Mandrogi. The amazing wooden church is on Kizhi Island.
Sept 24
We had a language lesson on the Cyrillic alphabet and elementary Russian this morning and then docked at Mandrogi. Mandrogi was a small town that was destroyed during WWII and has been being restored since the 1990’s into a craft village for the primary purpose of tourists on the river. Apparently, it’s also a tourist destination for Russians year round and Putin has a dacha here. We had a shashlyk (shish kabob) lunch during another deluge then were able to take a walk afterwards during a brief period of somewhat sunny sky. Back on the ship after lunch to continue down the river. We went through our 1st lock and had a cocktail party featuring Franzia box wine
Sept 25.
Arrived in Kizhi early AM. Kizhi is an island in Lake Onega and is a UNESCO World Heritage site. The island has been inhabited for almost 2000 years. Traditional homes have been maintained or restored as an open air museum with people making traditional crafts and the dwellings being maintained as they would have appeared in the 18th century. There is a 22 domed church that was built in 1714. It’s all wood and very beautiful with the colors of the domes changing according to the light (Church of the Transfiguration.) A second smaller church is the Church of the Intercession which is a functioning church. There are granaries, windmills, a blacksmith shop, etc on the island and it was incredibly picturesque especially with the fall foliage as a backdrop. We were lucky to have a mostly clear day with no rain but temperatures in the 40’s so we were wearing basically everything in our suitcases. We spent a couple hours there then back on the ship to finish traversing Lake Onega to enter the Volga-Baltic Canal. Our afternoon entertainment was a blini making lesson followed by a vodka tasting. We had 4 vodkas, the first 1 was flavored with something sweet like liqueuers. They told us there were four different things in it. Result: UGH. Vodka #2 also contaminated with something that made it taste like grain alcohol. #3 was lemon flavored and pretty good. #4 was the good stuff and they offered a thimble full.
Today I got a cryptic text from AT&T telling my international data usage was very high (despite that I was checking frequently to make sure I didn’t exceed the allotment I bought.) I called and found to my horror that my plan doesn’t apply to Russia! HUH???? There was no indication on their website spot where I bought this. In addition, the texting plan doesn’t apply here either and I have been texting my brains out. Whining at AT&T was effective in getting them to take off the charges. Both plans are good in Italy so I’ll be back to my usual Words with Friends, etc there plus in Moscow I have free internet. YAY!!

Peterhof

Sept 23

(Photo 1 at the Gulf Of Finland, Baltic Sea. Photo 2 Peterhof Palace view from garden)
Packed up and checked out to board our ship today. On the way to the ship, we visited Peterhof, now a town but originally the site of the palace of peter the Great built on the Gulf of Finland of the Baltic Sea. There are numerous other palaces that were subsequently built in the same area for members of peter’s family. The designer of the garden at Versailles designed the garden at Peterhof also. Peter had a thing for fountains and there are somewhere near a zillion fountains around the palace and garden. They are impressive in design , size and sheer number and all of them are fed solely by an extensive and elegant gravity system constructed with canals and holding ponds. The grounds were spectacular as was the palace. Much of the palace was destroyed during WWII and required extensive renovations which still are in progress. Of course, as soon as we finished the palace visit to go into the garden it began raining in an impressive deluge. Undaunted, we went out anyway and stood for a while under a pavilion until the rain slowed enough to see where we were going. We walked through the gorgeous gardens to the edge of the Gulf of Finland which, though quite narrow, didn’t allow us to see Finland. (Nor, just incidentally, could we see Sarah Palin’s house.) However, I can now say I say the Baltic Sea.
After leaving Peterhof we went to the port to board our ship and managed to put everything away in our tiny little cabin. Actually, cozy and comfortable enough but definitely not the great room we had at the Radisson. We sailed out of St. Petersburg under the only suspension bridge across the Neva River. At somewhere around 3AM we crossed part of Lake Ladoga the largest lake in Europe. The Neva is the only outflow of the lake though MANY rivers flow into the lake. This outflow combined with some high winds gave us some terrific rock and roll that let us know we were really on a ship. By morning we were back on flat water and soon entered another smooth river.