Russia With Love, 11 Days, 12 Pictures

[That's 12 pictures out of the 748 we brought home on the little digital pocket camera. You can click on any of them to see a fuller size.]

Welcome Back Jim!
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And didn't Billy do good!

I enjoyed reading all his posts, my vote is for the roses or the sleeping or the college on the cheap or the Adi Can, they all pleased my palate [Wikipedia][other palate pleasers].

Our holiday was an 11-Night Viking River Cruise, Waterways of the Czars. It was the ship's last cruise of the season. All the vendors were waiting to see us come, then go. Quite a lot had already folded their tents and stored their wares.

If we look cold in some of those pictures, we might have been. But then when we left, it was shorts and cut-offs weather in Houston. It really wasn't all that bad, lows generally in the mid 30's and highs in the high 40's. The last three days it got into the high 50's.

Today's blog will be a preview of our itinerary, with one picture from each day. In all I brought home 748 picures on the chip in my Kodak VR530. I haven't sorted those yet, some I took in the bus were too blurred, others had several shots of the same thing, some needed lightening up, and so on.

I will post about our trip maybe once or twice a week. Here's hoping it will be better and I will be more faithful than for our European visit this spring.
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Day One and One were spent traveling. Here we are, some of us who came from Frankfurt, Germany, waiting at the Moscow airport for a straggler.
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Day Two started with a Moscow tour in the morning, ending at the G.U.M. department store [found an ATM to get some Rubbles] and Red Square.

This is Red Square, with Lenin's tomb on the right and St. Basil's Cathedral at the west end. It would be our first of many cathedrals we would visit.

Later, in the afternoon we visited the State Tretyakov Gallery, the largest art museum in Russia. travel+and+places Travel Photos Kodak+VR530 Camera+Review Russia River+Boat River+Boat+Cruise Cruise
That evening we would attend a performance by the famed Moscow Circus.
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Day Three found us at the Kremlin for a nice tour. This is the Kremlin Wall.
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After the Kremlin visit, we cast off. There were ceremonies that had to be performed because it was the crew's last voyage of the season. The dining room wait staff pulled toss the balloon duty.
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Day Four included a tour of the city of Uglich.
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Day Five was a stop at Yaroslavl. Of course we toured this Church of Elijah the Prophet. Afterwards we made an Internet stop for e-mail and a comment on Billy's blog [here].
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Day Six meant we got to visit a monastery in Goritzy. There were all of two monks staying at this 23-acre haven. Goritzy is a quaint little town, larger than it seemed with a population of about 9,000.

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Day Seven was like a little bit of heaven. Here at Kizhi, an island four miles long and protected by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site, we were to visit this wooden Church of the Transfiguration you can see from our landing dock.
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Day Eight was spent entirely at sea. In the evening we attended the Captain's diner. We were sitting with my newly found Mason friend and his wife from Pennsylvania. He was proud of his new fifty-year pin. I had left mine home for fear of losing it in this distant land.
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Day Nine we were at our destination, St. Petersburg. Here were having a nice visit at Catherine's Palace in Pushkin.
Later would come an afternoon tour of St. Petersburg. That evening we visited a nice ballet performance of Swan Lake.
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On Day Ten we visited this magnificent Pavlovsk Palace (link) and its lovely grounds.

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Day Eleven found us out again, this time visiting the Hermitage, or the Winter Palace.
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Day Twelve came and we were out of there. Back to Texas and all of that. The downside found us getting up at 2:30 AM. It seemed worth it though, when we got to Houston at 1:30 in the same day's afternoon.