Russia, June 4 - June 19, 2009

(You'll find photos of the trip here.)
We landed in Moscow right on time after two very smooth flights and were greeted on board by a health inspector who walked the length of the plane with a hand held heat sensor looking for anyone with a fever who might have swine flu. Fortunately no one did. All along the way we saw lots of people with masks, got a handout on the first leg of the flight with symptoms of swine flu and instructions what to do if they developed. It seems folks are really nervous about this.

Passport control was bizarre! There were hordes of people, no discernible line or order and the inspectors really inspected. By the time we got through that mess our suitcases were pretty much the only ones left on the carousel. We breezed through customs (nothing to declare) and were met by an Intourist guide who put us in a car to the hotel. We were both very ready to get into our room. We spent an hour or so mapping out possible itineraries for the next two and a half days – the Tolstoy estate at Yasnaya Polyana, if possible, the Pushkin Art Museum, the Bolshoi if possible, the Izmailovsky Market for crafts and souvenirs. It was a lot, but we felt we could handle it once we had a good night's sleep.

The next day turned out to be very different from what we planned, mostly due to misinformation, miscommunication and general serendipitousness. Our plan was to go to the Izmailovsky Market which, according to Frommer's, is the best place to buy souvenirs like matryoshka and lacquer boxes. We were going to try to get tickets for a ballet and then go to the Pushkin Art Museum. We arranged at the front desk for a driver who would take us to and from the market, then to our next stop, wait while we got tickets. and then take us to the Pushkin. We planned to walk back to the hotel from there.

Well, here's how it really went. First of all, our first evening we had a light dinner in the hotel restaurant that came to over 2000 rubles total which, conservatively meant we spent about $45 each on dinner. That said, we were already thinking about other options for meals. We got to the market and discovered booth after booth of clothes and food with not a souvenir anywhere to be seen. It was very interesting, though, and as we walked around we decided to buy food to bring back to our room for dinner. We ended up with caviar, tins of smoked fish, tomatoes, cucumbers, radishes and a package of flat pita-like bread. The market was interesting on many levels, not only for the selection of foods. Everything is sold from small booths. The vendors, mostly women, get the items you ask for – or in our case point to – and pack them up for you. We were able to select our own tomatoes, cukes and radishes, but that was the only place that happened.

We bought calzone-like rolls and some bottled water, found a nice bench and enjoyed our lunch and walked around the area which seemed residential and quite nice, handy to the metro, handy to the market, and well kept up. We passed a music store and both of us bought CDs of Russian music.

Our driver was waiting for us when we were ready to leave. The market wasn't what we thought it would be, but it really was fascinating. We finally got through that we wanted the Bolshoi and the Pushkin Art Museum, but then I noticed that the meter was running in the cab – at that point over 3000 rubles or about $100! We made a quick decision to ask to be dropped off at the Bolshoi and paid up – by then closer to 4500 rubles. We attempted unsuccessfully to find where to ask about tickets, saw that the building was undergoing major renovations and appeared to be closed, decided to skip that and set out to find the Pushkin. We started on what seemed to be the correct route, got lost, hailed a cab, laid out another $80 or so and found ourselves in Pushkin's House Museum, not the art museum. The displays seemed to echo the content of Pushkin’s works and there was a lovely concert going on -an opera on a small stage so again, not where we thought we were going, but really quite a nice “accident.”

The guard at the front door of the museum was charming, marked out a map for us to walk back to our hotel and even walked us outside to point us in the right direction to get to Tverskaya Street and “home.” We followed his directions, hit a dead end with a cross street that wasn't the one we were looking for, saw a large hotel, walked in, got a better map and directions from a very accommodating receptionist who, I'm sure, found it very funny when we walked in announcing that we were lost. He marked the route for us and we were on the way again. On the way we hit Arbat Street, another major shopping area, and spent a fair amount of time poking around in lots of stores. Eventually we worked our way back to the hotel where we feasted on caviar, tinned fish, fresh veggies and grapes with pieces of our flat bread. There was enough left over for dinner the next day supplemented by some cheese and sausage.

To sum it all up, we did nothing that we expected to do and had a wonderful time getting lost, found unexpected things instead and generally enjoyed the adventure of it all. Fortunately both of us are pretty easy going about stuff like this. We spent way more money than we anticipated on cabs, but saved on lunch and dinner. We planned to go back to Arbat Street the next day to buy some of what we had looked at.

Sunday didn't unfold exactly as planned either, but by the time we were done we had accomplished what we set out to do. First stop was Red Square, a straight walk down Tverskaya Street from the hotel. Of course, we weren't totally sure we were in Red Square at first, but we did figure it out. It is impressive. The Kremlin Wall bounds one side with Lenin’s tomb facing into the square under the Kremlin wall. GUM bounds the square on the opposite side. On one end is St. Basil’s with its beautiful multicolored domes and another lovely cathedral is on the other end. A small church was broadcasting mass into the square, beautiful voices and very nice as an atmospheric touch. The square itself is quite impressive.

Next was a visit into the Kremlin itself. It took a few tries to find the ticket kiosk. We asked a tour guide for directions which we followed up to a point, decided we had gone too far, asked a street cleaner for help, got the same directions, found out that we would have found it if we had gone just a little further the first time around, and finally got our ticket. So basically we didn't trust the guy who spoke really good English but did follow directions from the woman who spoke no English and communicated with gestures and sign language.

The churches in the Kremlin’s Cathedral Square are beautiful, but only one was open. The Church of the Assumption is very small and it was very crowded. We were also able to go into the Patriarch's Palace, a museum filled with embroidered pieces, gold and silver, probably things of religious significance, but since there were very no signs in English, I don't know.

One adventure before we got inside. We detoured briefly to a garden outside the Kremlin. I was watching a little girl – maybe four years old or so – walking around the space As she passed us she suddenly realized that she had lost sight of her family. She looked all around, her hand went to her mouth and then the tears started. She started to walk farther away trying to find them. I spotted a man in uniform on the other side of the fountain and that way, frantically thumbing through my dictionary to try to find “child” and “lost.” My friend stayed near the girl to make sure she didn't leave the immediate area. Finally her family stood and waved. We set the little one in the right direction and went on our way pleased with having done a good deed. We had congratulated ourselves on our first day for having supported the working man in Russia by paying exorbitant taxi fares, but that was a different story!

After the Kremlin visit we headed for Arbat to revisit the stores where we had found things we wanted to buy. Once again we got a little lost, somehow missing a huge street where we were supposed to turn. We did eventually get where we were going, but true to form, by a route other than the one we planned. Later in the trip we passed by the same route and saw the huge street that we had somehow missed when we were walking. I don’t know how that’s possible, but it happened.

We each bought a lovely set of matryoshka dolls and went to a restaurant advertising “Modern Russian Food” with a menu in English, German and Russian showing soups, bliny and other items. My friend had mushroom soup and a mushroom and cheese bliny, which she said was very good. I got borscht – not like my mother made, but excellent – and an onion, bacon and cream cheese bliny, also delicious. On the way back to our hotel we passed a little market down a side street and found a vendor selling cheeses and sausages. We bought a good sized wedge of yellow cheese that was quite tasty. I bought a sausage, also very tasty, to supplement our leftovers.

By the end of our second day we hadn’t gotten to the Tolstoy estate, the Pushkin Art Museum or the Bolshoi. But we shopped for food and dined on caviar in the comfort of our room, I sort of communicated in my very, very rudimentary Russian and I gained tremendous empathy for anyone who is functionally illiterate, which I am in this country. I can barely read signs and when I do decipher them I don't know what the words mean unless they are cognates like theater, restaurant, hotel or cafe. We got lost, found our way back, and kept our senses of humor throughout.

Monday was our last day on our own and true to form we discovered things by accident and didn't find certain other things. On our walks toward Red Square we had noticed beautiful bright blue domes on a church that seemed to be a couple of blocks off Tverskaya, so that was our next destination. That's when we encountered problem number one – how to get to the other side of this huge and very busy street! We didn't see any pedestrian underground crossings (although we subsequently discovered that we had missed one and also that the metro stops could be used as crossovers as well.) We walked much further down Tverskaya than we wanted to, found a crossover, and came up on the other side practically on top of the Moskva bookstore, walked in, asked about dual language poetry books and I walked out with a beautiful volume of poetry by Elena Ignatova. And in another underground crossing my friend found one of her big quests – a beautiful silver Eastern cross. We wouldn't have found either item had we known where we were going and gone by the most direct route.

The blue domes belonged to the Church of the Nativity of the Virgin of Putinka. It's small but exquisite, clearly a church used by neighborhood worshipers and not a tourist attraction. We saw several people coming in to pray. The floor was strewn with straw and all along the altar were tree branches stuck into the railing. We had noticed women yesterday carrying sprigs of the same type of branches. Later I found out that this was in celebration of Pentecost.

After spending some time in the church we walked to a nearby park and picnicked on out last bit of bread, cheese, grapes and bottled water. Kiosks selling water are all over the place, very convenient. We learned in our roaming that the cooler is locked and is opened by the vendor from inside. We asked for “vada bez gaz” which is "still water," waited for the cooler to be unlocked, and then took what we wanted and paid for it. I felt like a real native, or at least a sophisticated traveler who knows some of the little different ways of doing things in this city.

After lunch we walked down to Red Square for a second visit. Our plan was to spend a little time looking around in GUM. Instead we spent time looking at a long row of vendors’ booths outside the square. We saw very much the same stuff we had seen on Arbat, nothing we needed to buy, but fun to look at. We went into the church that had been broadcasting mass on Sunday – also very beautiful. Then we headed back to the hotel, got our suitcases out of the safe room and sat in the lobby to wait for our car to take us to the ship.

The pick up was scheduled for four and we started to get nervous around 4:15. We asked the receptionist to help us find out if there was a problem and it turned out that every phone number we had was incorrect or led to someone who had no idea what we were talking about, By then it was 4:30 and both of us were getting pretty nervous. But right at that moment the driver walked in carrying a paper with our names printed on it and off we went.

Our cabin on the river boat Zosima Shashkov was small, but efficient. After dinner we explored a little and I found where to do tai chi. Then we had a short orientation meeting with Violetta, our tour leader, and our guide from the ship, Anna and we all introduced ourselves. Interestingly,Violetta suggested NOT wearing our name tags when we are out touring since they draw attention. That's the first time I've ever heard that on one of these trips.

The first official day of touring was very full with lots of information—too much to remember. We went first to Sparrow Hill, which had a beautiful view of the city and is also right by the main building of Moscow University, a gorgeous piece of architecture. Next we went to New Maiden Convent where Peter the Great sent his first wife in order to get rid of her. Violetta is a fount of knowledge and makes it all very interesting, so the history lesson was super. From there we went to the Tretyakov Gallery, an amazing museum of Russian artists. Violetta's commentary was knowledgeable, insightful, interesting and impassioned – a true delight. The exhibitions were beautiful and she made everything so interesting that it was a real treat.

For some unknown reason lunch was at the Hard Rock Cafe. They did not accommodate the three vegetarians in our group very well. My friend asked for a salad and the waiter rather bluntly said “no.” It was not pleasant and almost everyone in the group seemed dismayed by the choice of restaurants. However, this was really the only sour note of the entire trip.

The next stop was Red Square. We approached it from the opposite direction than the one where we had entered on our own, so we saw a new and fuller view of St. Basil's. They were constructing a stage in front of the church for the June 12 Revolution Day celebrations, so we had seen the spires, but nothing else. It really is breathtaking, one of those things that is so beautiful and so unusual that it looks like a stage set. (I’m going to use “breathtaking” a lot in this report, so I apologize in advance. It’s the only word that fits some of the places we visited) Finally we walked around the corner for a wonderful concert of Russian Orthodox liturgical music and folk music. The singers, especially the basso profundo, were amazing! I ended up buying a CD, my third for the trip.

Wednesday was our final half day in Moscow. We set out at 9 AM for the Kremlin. I had hoped to see parts that we had missed but the most part we saw the same places, but with great explanations from Violetta. She told us about the various buildings with neat little anecdotes, like how the communists called the double headed eagle “that ugly bird” and which church was the one for marriages, which for coronations and which for funerals. Of course, I don't remember which one was which now.

We went inside the Church of the Assumption. which was very crowded, but Violetta managed to tell us all about the layout, the various rows of icons and what they depicted and then pointed out a couple of especially beautiful old icons. It's amazing, as it always is to me, that these things have survived for centuries. We saw Ivan the Terrible's throne! You read about these people in books and then suddenly you are in the same room with something they actually used centuries ago.

We also went into the church of Michael the Archangel. After we had been there for a while five priests came up and sang the most beautiful hymn or prayer. I was blown away again by the basso profundo who seemed to reach down miles below the surface of the earth for the low notes.

Our final stop for the day in Moscow was the Armory Museum where we saw various Tsarinas' coronation dresses (along with stories, of course), thrones, including the one Peter the Great used when he was a boy with a cut out place behind which his older sister could stand to tell him how to answer the questions and comments of foreign ambassadors. We saw crowns embellished with hundreds of diamonds and other precious gems, Fabergé Easter eggs and the “surprises” that were hidden inside them – flowers that opened to reveal tiny portraits, a tiny ship, a miniature train. As always, Violetta's commentary was inspired and inspiring.

After lunch we had our first lecture with Professor Yuri Dubinin. His topic was the current state of Russian-US relations. It was clear that he was no fan of George W. Bush and he seemed to assume that we all felt the same, which I actually think was accurate. His most interesting point in my opinion was a reminder that Russia is not the Soviet Union. It doesn't have the same power, the same goals, the same resources or the same interests. I hadn't realized that I probably assumed that Russia IS still the same as the USSR was, but what he said was very true.

After we set sail, ur first stop the next day was Uglich which we reached around 4 PM. The morning was beautiful, warm and sunny and the sun deck was filled with fat Spanish women wearing very skimpy bathing suits – not a pretty sight early in the morning. After breakfast Violetta gave a fabulous lecture on medieval Russian history. She really made a relatively dry list of names and dates extremely interesting and appealing by adding lots of anecdotes about each one of the rulers. She is a real treasure! When she was about a third of the way through the rulers – up to Ivan the Terrible – the alarm bell rang. We all returned to our cabins, put on our life jackets and reported to the sun deck. Ship personnel checked to see that we had the jackets on correctly and then gathered us in a group for a photograph and then dismissed us. It was silly and basically useless should there be a real emergency. We had no idea where the lifeboat stations were, the halls were crowded, people were slow. Fortunately there was never a need to test the system, but it was worrisome.

After the drill Violetta finished her lecture and spoke about how the teaching of history in Russia changes with each new ruler – the tsars are taught or they are not, the early Communists are or are not, the revolution is covered or it's not. I guess it's not surprising given what I know about some of the more recent heads of state and their political philosophies.

When we arrived in Uglich we were greeted on the dock by musicians and then walked a gauntlet of vendors. Our charming local guide, Olga, referred to it as the Street of Temptation. We were advised to look on the way in and shop on the way out, so we all looked. We visited the Church of Dmitry on the Blood, honoring the son of Ivan the Terrible who was probably killed by supporters of Boris Godonov. Like all of the churches we've seen, it's beautifully decorated with amazing frescoes covering every inch of wall, ceiling and columns. Then we saw the palace and got a little lesson in Russian hospitality. Welcome and honored guests are greeted at the foot of the stairs with bread and salt; less welcome guests are greeted at the top with nothing. The final stop was the Church of the Transfiguration, another little gem. Finally we had a very short concert – two songs – by the Uglich choral ensemble called Arch. There were five men ranging from a countertenor to a basso profundo and they were amazing. It sounded like a huge choir, filling the space with intricate and gorgeous harmonies.

Shortly after we started back down the Street of Temptations it began to pour and hail. In seconds I was soaked to the skin and I hurried back to the ship. The rain stopped just as I got to there with about a half hour left before we needed to board, but I was soaked and my shoes were lakes so I just went back to the cabin, changed and dried off. Apparently everyone else stuck it out and almost everyone came back with purchases.

Our next stop was Goritsy, an old village and the site of a monastery that dates back to the time of Ivan the Terrible. We didn't get there until 1:00 PM so we had a lovely presentation in the morning about various Russian crafts. It was presented by the gift shop manager and was clearly a sales pitch, but the things she showed us – matryoshka, lacquer boxes, painted wood pieces, amber, lacy angora shawls, porcelain and traditional dolls – were lovely. Very expensive, but lovely,

The weather was threatening but we had learned our lesson and came prepared with rain gear. Goritsy was interesting. The monastery is huge and not in very good repair, but one can still see the walls and buildings, some of which are open to the public as a museum. We had what seems to be the obligatory two song concert by an all male chorus of four singers selling CDs, as have all the others.

After we got back to the ship we had a very interesting talk by Violetta on Medvedev and Putin. It's interesting that they have very different philosophies even though Medvedev was hand picked by Putin to be his successor. Putin is much more of an conservative, much more authoritarian and Medvedev is much more open to changing the things he sees as wrong with the country.

The following day we got a lesson in matryoshka painting. We were given blank dolls and a schematic to follow to draw a face, shawl, dress and apron. Some of the folks who participated did beautiful work and others, myself included, produced work that looked exactly as if it was the first time we had attempted anything like this.

The next activity in our busy morning was a Russian lesson. We looked over the alphabet and Violetta talked about good friends (the letters that look and sound allmost the same in English and Russian such as A, M, T, K and others), false friends (the letters that look like English letters but represent different sounds such as P, B, C) and no friends (the letters that do not look like English letters at all, many of which are the same as Greek letters, though, and the one that makes the sound SH and looks like a Hebrew shin.) Anna taught the language lesson, leading us through pronounciation of some basic vocabulary like hello, thank you, please, etc. I didn’t do too badly, although it was hard to wrap my mouth around the word for hello, which is zdrastvuitye.


Our visit later that day to Kizhi Island was amazing. Once again we had a fabulous local guide, Natalia. She teaches English during the school year and she was as charming and knowledgeable as the others have been. The island itself is breathtaking. All the structures on the island are wood, including the magnificent summer church (Transfiguration) with twenty-one domes of aspen that has weathered to a silvery gray and a smaller winter church (Intercession) with ten domes. The staircase that raises the floor above the ground, the low ceilings and the small windows all help keep in the heat and keep out the cold. Natalia told us that winter lasts from October to April and that summers aren't very warm, although we had a very warm, sunny day. She described it as nine months of waiting and three months of disappointment.

The small church is a “working” church, not a museum. I noticed that Natalia put up the hood of her jacket when we entered. It amazes me to think that these churches, built in the 17th and 18th centuries, could be raised to such heights and designed with such lovely and complex architecture, completely of wood and that they have lasted so long. We even saw a small wooded church that dates back to the 14th century – even more amazing given the history and climate of this area.

Dinner was billed as a pirate dinner and we were invited to come in pirate costumes. A few of our group made a cursory attempt at making eye patches or using makeup. The Spanish passengers (240 of them on this cruise) went all out. After we sat down, the staff in their pirate costumes came and “kidnapped” two of our group who had birthdays during the trip. They were brought in blindfolded while we made lots of noise, and then we sang Happy Birthday. They were each given a very nice cake which, of course, they shared with the rest of us.

Our final stop before reaching St. Petersburg was Mandrogui, a sort of Potemkin Village/Sturbridge with reconstructions of homes and craft workshops. It wasn’t “authentic” but it was very interesting and very picturesque. Violetta had told us to be sure and check out the restaurant selling pirozhki (turnover type pastries filled with anything from meat to vegetables to fruit.) It was, as promised, very nice and the pirozhki were delicious, washed down with unsweetened cranberry juice – tart but very refreshing.

Before we disembarked at Mandrogui we got a rough schedule for our days in St. Peterburg It called for a city tour the next day, with a couple of stops in the morning, return to the ship in the afternoon and back into the city for a performance in the evening. We had a meeting with Violetta and were able to work out that those who wished could stay in the city after the tour and she would arrange a time and place for the bus to pick us up.

During the city tour many buildings were pointed out, too many to keep track of. We stopped to see the Smolny Convent where Peter the Great’s daughter Elizabeth planned to go until she decided that she enjoyed the “party girl” life too much. It is a gorgeous complex of light blue and white buildings that look like a giant Wedgewood confection. We also stopped near the Admiralty Monument with a wonderful view of the city in the distance across the river. Then on to the Peter and Paul Fortress and a beautiful church where many of the tsars of Russia are buried, including Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great. Nicholas II and Alexandra were interred there recently after being “rehabilitated” by the government after the fall of the Soviet Union. Our local guide, Elena, was another wonderful historian and narrator. We were so very lucky in that regard all through this trip.

Then we were on our own if we so chose. Fourteen of us stayed in the city on our own and six went back to the ship to rest and relax. Violetta and Elena had pointed out some possible places to visit and Elena very obligingly marked the route and location to a couple of sites on the map my friend had found at an Info kiosk near the Smolny Convent. The map has street names only in Latin letters, but between the two of us we were able to negotiate.

My friend and I visited two beautiful churches, both of which are now museums. First was St. Isaac's, built in the mid-19th century, capable of holding 14,000 people decorated with the usual gorgeous frescoes and massive columns of green malachite, blue lazurite and granite. From there we walked to the Church of the Savior on the spilled Blood, built on the site where Alexander I was assassinated in 1881. It is referred to as the second St. Basil's because of its brightly colored domes which can be seen from a distance and become more dazzling the closer you get. We approached it by walking alongside one of the many canals, stopping every few feet to just gasp at the splendor of it all.

Inside is even more dazzling. We had seen churches in Moscow and elsewhere covered floor to ceiling with tiers of frescoes depicting saints, apostles, angels and so on. In this church they are all mosaic, including faces of Mary and others up inside the domes. It was breathtaking.

Just behind the church we found the large open-air crafts and souvenir market and spent a fair amount of time strolling up and down the aisles looking at various things. We had fun bargaining with the vendors at each stall and got “discounts” on each purchase. We spent a some more time just walking around the city, including a walk around Gostiniiy Dvor, the big shopping arcade on Nevsky Prospekt. Some of the shops are very expensive, but some are very reasonable. We saw souvenirs, jewelry, household goods, lines, clothing, toys, CDs and DVDs – you name it. I was particularly amused that one of the stores carrying games had a Russian version of Monopoly prominently displayed. How capitalist can you get!

Finally it was time to work our way to the Grand Hotel Europa where we were to meet Violetta and the rest of the group. Once we had gathered we set out down Nevsky on a city bus –crowded because it was rush hour. Then Violetta realized that we needed the tram, not the bus, so we got off. The tram was very crowded and very hot and several of us were stuck standing in the rear stairwell getting shoved by passengers trying to get on or off. Sort of like New York at rush hour.

The folkloric music and dance show was fun – lots of energetic Cossack dances, bright costumes, some funny moments and generally enjoyable. My dancer eye caught several things that needed serious cleaning, but all in all it was fun. We got back to the ship fairly late and didn't sit down to dinner until nearly eleven. We were all hungry, but I felt sorry for the dining room and kitchen staff working way past their normal hours.

The next morning we had a lecture on Russia Today by Sergey Akopov, a professor at the State University of St. Petersburg. He spoke about the problems in Russia today (mostly focusing on corruption) and the ways in which Russia has changed over the last decade or so, becoming more global in its outlook, less isolated, more accepting of outside influence and less subject to the control of oligarchs and political power grabbers. He emphasized that the history and culture of Russia does not include democracy as we in the US define it, but seemed to feel that Russia was moving in that direction.

After lunch we went to the Hermitage with a stop en route to see the Battleship Aurora which is most famous for having fired on the Winter Palace at the start of the Russian Revolution in 1917. Elena, our local guide, spent most of the hermitage tour discussing the rooms and the buildings rather than the art, which was fine with me, She did spend some time on two Michelangelo pieces, a Rembrandt and some other items, but mostly she pointed out inlaid floors, chandeliers, gilded columns, brass and wood doors and so on. The place is truly gorgeous. One room is more breathtaking than the next and the attention to detail that went into its design is astounding. For example, in one room the inlaid pattern of the floor is mirrored in the gilt painting of the ceiling. In another place the doors, designed by a British artist, are made of wood inlaid with brass and the front and back are like the positive and negative images of a photo. Astounding. We saw huge vases made of malachite and lapis and a massive section of mosaic floor that had been in St. Isaac's although it depicts Greek mythological figures with the head of Medusa in the center. We finished the museum visit with a few minutes to check out the Impressionist rooms on our own. There's no way to see it all, even if we had several more hours, and unfortunately the crush of tourists (like ourselves) make it hard to really spend any time on any one piece. But we got a wonderful overview of the place and certainly got to see some of the most spectacular aspects of the building itself even if the art got a bit short-changed. If we had more time I'd consider going back and braving horrendously long lines to get in. The art is undeniably impressive, with large collections of pieces by every famous artist whose name I've ever heard, but it's the building itself that will stay with me. I'll have to spend some time on the museum website now that I can put it all into some context.

On our next to last day It poured and it was COLD! Nevertheless, we had a wonderful morning excursion to Peterhof, a compound built originally by Peter the Great and expanded by some of his family. There are palaces, gardens and glorious fountains, some of which are “trick” fountains that can be turned on manually to soak the unsuspecting visitor who sits on an inviting secluded bench or strolls a lovely tree-lined passage. Peter apparently had an interesting sense of humor. The place was just gorgeous and we even got a brief look at the Baltic Sea. Brief because it was cold and rainy and when we turned the corner to where we could see the sea, extremely windy. Everyone snapped a quick photo and left as soon as they could.

After Peterhof we drove back to the city center. Groups of people had different ideas about where they wanted to go. Since the rain was still coming down, Violetta took a poll and dropped groups off at convenient locations, having set a meeting place and time for our return to the ship. I joined five others to visit the synagogue which dates back to the 1800s. It was restored and rededicated in 2001 and it is just beautiful. The rabbi, a Chabad Lubovitcher from Crown Heights who has been there for 17 years, is also the Chief rabbi of St. Petersburg. We roamed around the main sanctuary on our own and then ventured upstairs to try to get the view from the women's gallery. We met the rabbi, spoke with him for a bit, and then a young woman showed us around and answered our questions about both the history and the present situation. She spoke about the “lost generation” of Jews who lost their Jewish identity during the years of repression, but said that the current younger generation is returning, if not to the religion then at least to the cultural identity. It is amazing that this place and a Jewish community of any kind survived the pogroms and repression of the late 1800's and early 1900s when most Jews couldn't live in St. Petersburg at all, the Nazis, and the repression that existed under Stalin and the leaders who came after him until the 1980s or so. There's a lot of truth to the old jokes about “they tried to kill us, we survived, let's eat.”

After we had seen the synagogue three of us chose to walk along one of the canals back to Nevsky. We got to see a part of the city we hadn't yet explored, and we also got soaked and cold. We stopped for a snack at the café in Gostiniiy Dvor where a tea, a coffee, two cheese pastries and one ice cream cost only 120 rubles or about $4.00, rather surprising for what seems to be such an upscale arcade with so many pricey shops.

On our final day we were supposed to have a boat ride on the canals followed by a visit to the Czar's Village and Catherine's Palace, site of the famous Amber Room. Because of the rain the day before the water level in the canals was too high to allow the boats to pass safely under the low bridges, so our schedule was changed. Instead we went to Catherine's Palace in the morning and to Pavlovsk, palace of Paul and Maria, afterwards.

Catherine's Palace is spectacular. One room is more breathtaking (yes, I know I’ve overused that word, but there isn’t another that fits!) than the next, with gilded doors, marble columns, ornate furnishings, huge, beautiful crystal chandeliers, inlaid floors, paintings on the ceiling. Huge, ornate rooms with every inch covered by some sort of extravagant detail. The Amber Room is really spectacular. The walls are paneled in mosaic amber, with amber frames for several large pictures and amber details around the fireplace. The detailed information about the various rooms and things in the room was also overwhelming. I will try to read a bit about it at a later date and hope I can match my photos, my memories and the information.

Pavlovsk, the palace of Paul I (son of Catherine the Great) and Maria is much more understated and elegant than Catherine's Palace. We couldn't take pictures unless we bought a permit, which no one did, but I hope to find a website with pictures and information . If I had to choose a palace to live in (what a tragedy that would be!) I'd pick Pavlovsk.

Some final thoughts – the two cities we visited were different, but each lovely in its own way. Moscow is the capital and seemed more modern somehow. St. Petersburg is just beautiful with its canals and gorgeous churches. The people we met along the way were generally helpful and friendly even though we had major communication issues. The group we traveled with was congenial, interesting and fun to be with. The villages we stopped at along the river were fascinating. It’s mind-boggling to think how people survive the bitterly cold long winters. And it always fascinates me to see buildings that have survived centuries despite the ravages of time and war and “progress.” I was surprised by the long hours of sunlight. I knew it intellectually but had never experienced it before – sunset after 11:00 PM and sunrise around 4:30 AM (and no room-darkening curtains anywhere we stayed!). All in all it was a fascinating, informative and enjoyable trip.


-->