Moscow 2011

The Kremlin

Travel Dates 10th-11th June 2011

Click on any picture to see a larger version. 

On arrival in Moscow we docked at the North River terminal on the Moscow Canal about 20 km northwest of the Kremlin.

I said goodbye to my young cruise guide and welcomed my new guide Olga for the Moscow visit. She was excellent and knew her city well. We joined the French groups on a dinner cruise in the evening but for the rest of the day I was able to wander my own way with her instead of following the French groups. The ride into the centre was interesting, lots of brutalist apartment architecture and lots of traffic.

The OMON (cyrillic OMOH) Special Purpose Mobile Unit are a branch within the National Guard of Russia. Their main function is officially antiterrorist and antiriot. Everything seemed peaceful when I took this picture. Maybe he was not needed. Or maybe he was why it was peaceful...

Entering Red Square is like entering Disneyland. Everything is over the top and larger than life. The Kremlin is simply massive. The picture above shows part of the outer wall. This is a plan of the walled complex; it is easy to see how past tsars and Soviet leaders were able to isolate themselves from the general population.  

St Basil's cathedral dominates the entrance to Red Square. The design and colours are straight out of a fairy tale. Stalin ordered all the churches in the square destroyed in 1936 but saner heads managed to convince him to leave St Basil's. 

This is the GUM store. Reserved for the top echelon in Soviet days, now open to anyone with roubles.

Olga took me to the top floor for coffee. The prices seemed geared to tourists and not the locals. Possibly too many roubles required for a crowd.

The State Historical Museum.

Kazan Cathedral was originally a small church built in 1636 and expanded over the centuries with a major reconstruction completed in 1932. Four years later Stalin had it destroyed to allow bigger May Day military parades in the square. It was the first church rebuilt after the collapse of the Soviet Union, completed in 1993 based on detailed measurements and photographs of the original church.  

Just me, a bit younger and a lot fitter..

Inside the Kremlin walls it becomes clear how big it is. These are some of the governmental buildings. 

Several churches have survived and been renovated within the walls. I was told the domes are gilded with real gold; that might even be true...

The Fabergé museum is inside the Kremlin. These are some of the pictures I took before a guard informed me rather forcibly that cameras were forbidden. I missed seeing that notice. Oops.

I have heard of the crack in the USA Liberty Bell. It looks like the Russian one is bigger with an even bigger crack. 

Getting all my ducks in a row in a Moscow park.

The following pictures were taken from the boat during the dinner cruise on the Moscow River which was included in the itinerary.

I don't recall where I took this picture; I think I saw it on a wall in the Kremlin. I was interested to see how the Russians built a canal system over time linking their major cities with the Baltic sea as a summer port and the Black and Caspian seas as all year ports. The Blue section at the top left is close to the route we followed.

Cheers, Alan

Cruising from St Petersburg to Moscow on Lev Tolstoy

M/S Lev Tolstoy

Travel Dates 4th-11th June 2011

Click on any picture to see a larger version. 

I have culled the pictures to keep this post reasonably brief, just a few representative pictures of the journey.

After boarding and checking in we went on a bus tour of St Petersburg ending with a tour of the Hermitage. We departed that evening towards Mandrogui via the Neva River and lake Ladoga. The Lev Tolstoy was a comfortable boat despite showing its age. Nine years later I notice it is no longer being used for international tourists and is now providing shorter Russian-only cruises. 

This was the route we followed, a series of lakes, rivers and canals with several locks. We stopped along the way to visit Mandrogui, Kizhi, Goritsy and Uglich. Those are all standard stops for almost all the cruise boats. 

I have arranged river cruises using local agents twice on my travels. Both times I was assured my fellow passengers would be English-speaking. Despite that I cruised down the Nile on a boat full of Germans and a month before my Russian cruise, too late to change, I was informed all the other passengers would be from France. Oh well, c'est la vie. The Russian tour agent offered two benefits to compensate: a personal guide and arrangements that the others on my table at meals would be able to speak English. 

My personal guide was a lovely girl and tried very hard in a situation unfair to her. Over the course of the week she became more helpful but on the first day at the Hermitage it was a disaster. Instead of directly acting as my guide she trailed the French guide and attempted to translate from the French announcements to English for me with an inaudible voice amid noisy crowds. In the quiet afterwards I learned she was effectively an intern on her first work experience. The poor girl had been thrown in at the deep end. After I made it clear I wanted her not to follow the French but to tell me what she knew herself, even if it was less detailed, things improved.

My dining companions were pleasant and friendly but we only met at meals. One couple were multi-lingual Russians and the others were French who spoke very good English. 

An interesting fort we passed in the Neva River as we left St Petersburg. 

We went ashore for several hours at Mandrogui, a village described as a "wooden living museum". The most interesting exhibit was the vodka museum. I tried several tiny tasting shots but I must admit I need tonic to mix with my vodka; not straight. Lunch was a tasty outdoor shaslik barbecue.

I enjoyed lazing in a chair on the deck watching the countryside go by.

  

We continued via the Volga Baltic Canal to the northern end of Lake Onega. The tiny island of Kizhi is renowned for its open-air Museum of Architecture, which includes over 80 monuments of wooden architecture from various areas of Russia restored to form a glimpse of the past.

While eating lunch on board on the fourth morning the silvery appearance of Kizhi cathedral in the dining room window as we slowly docked was magical. It is the Church of the Transfiguration or Preobrazhenskaya featuring five tiers of 22 domes. It was built in 1714, on the site of a previous church destroyed by fire, without the use of a single nail, only an axe and pine trees. The legend goes that the carpenter threw his axe into the lake when it was completed because "there will never be another like it".

  

Not just a demonstration, he is preparing pieces for renovation and repair work.

The obligatory visit to the bridge.

  

Several members of the staff and crew had double roles as entertainers. This was showing us how to cook blinis.

The entertainers provided some variety, not just folk songs but also classical and popular music pieces. Songs tended to be in Russian or French, none in English. They were OK but faded a little towards the end of the tour.

This is the ship Peterhof in front of us in one of the locks; a tight fit. We were of a similar width. Obviously the boats were designed to be as wide as possible in the space available.

 St. Cyril on the White Lake Monastery near Goritsy.

A plan of the monastery. Very self-sufficient and built for defence against marauders.

Excellent a cappella singers performed for us at Goritsy and later at Uglich. Their harmony and choice of Russian songs were wonderful. I could have listened to them longer but, of course, there was another tour group waiting for us to move on in both cases. For most of the 7-day trip we were not rushed or crowded, just unfortunate for the crowds to arrive at those moments.

At the time we passed by Cherepovets it had the unfortunate distinction of being one of the world's most polluted cities. According to wiki it still is. Several hours before sighting it the air became smoky and sulphurous, intensifying until we passed. Several passengers donned masks to aid breathing.

Uglich was our last stop before Moscow. The town was founded in 1148 as a small princedom bordering on Muscovy and much of it is preserved as one of the towns of Old Russia. The view of the town as you approach it from the Volga River is breathtaking with the Cathedral of the Resurrection and St. John´s Church rising up on the horizon.

This street performer  played some amazing tunes on partly filled glasses of water.

St. John´s Church, Uglich.

In the icon museum.

The history of the town is interesting. At the end of the 16th century Maria Nagaya, seventh wife of Ivan the Terrible, lived in exile at the Kremlin in Uglich. In her garden 10 year old Prince Dmitry of the Rurik Dynasty, heir to the Russian throne, was murdered by Boris Godunov who wanted to seize power for himself. The Church of St. Demitrius of the Blood was built on the spot of his death. The death of Prince Dmitri brought on the start of the Time of Troubles, a dynastic and political crisis and one of the most tumultuous periods in Russian history which ended 15 years later after the election of a new Tsar Mikhail Romanov, the first Tsar of the Romanov Dynasty.

Some pictures from the final cruise to Moscow.

Gone, but not forgotten. I often saw relics of communism: statues, hammer and sickle, red stars etc. Usually derelict but not always.

The final two nights of the cruise were spent in port in Moscow. That will be the next report. 

Cheers, Alan