Yaroslavl - 1 August 2008

Leaving the main St Petersburg-Moscow route the ship took a 250 km side trip up the Volga River to Yaroslavl, the draw card being the UNESCO World Heritage listed Church of St Elijah in the main, or 'Soviet Square'. Unfortunately, we arrived on the feast day of St Elijah so the church was closed to visitors. This town was home to some 50 Russian Orthodox churches, as well as a monastery, nunnery, mosque and synagogue before the Soviet regime and only about half have survived.

The monastery really wasn't worth visiting, after the Kirillov monastery yesterday and, unless you were keen on onion domed churches, there was very little to see or do during our short stop-over. We visited the local market and saw the confluence on the Volga and Kotorosl Rivers and our overall impression was 'not worth the detour'. The most positive aspect of the day was the warm sunny day, much of which we spent on deck watching the world go by.

Goritsky & Kirilov - 31 July 2008

Our next stop was not scheduled until mid afternoon so we were entertained by part two of a very informative History Channel series Russia - the Land of the Tsars and then a tour of the bridge of the ship which, the Captain told us, was built in 1985.

The Russia – the Land of the Tsars series was played over 4 days and was an extremely interesting and informative program that gave a good grounding in the history of Russia and which, most of us acknowledged, filled in the lamentable gaps in our education.

At 2 p.m. the ship berthed at Goritsy a very small village, with a Nunnery, built on the shore of the White Lake, but that was not the purpose of our stop. We boarded a shuttle bus that took us to a nearby town that is built around the Kirillo-Belozersky monastery, the largest in Europe. The complex covers more than 10 hectares with its longest wall over 2 km. In 1397 Kirill the monk, then aged 60, walked the 500 km from Moscow to found this monastery at a place that that been revealed to him in a vision and although the thousands of hectares that once belonged to the monastery were confiscated by Catherine the Great the central buildings still stand as part museum, part monastery - now home to just three monks.

Amazingly the iconostasis survived the Soviet regime and while the main church is undergoing restoration a number of the icons from the iconostasis are displayed in the museum on site alongside others from different parts of Russia.

Kizhi Island - 30 July 2008

Outside our window when we awoke this morning was the jewel in the crown of Russian wooden architecture and construction, the Transfiguration Cathedral on Kizhi Island. This small island, only 6 miles long and one mile wide has now been turned into a heritage museum as a showcase of Russian wooden buildings. The three structures in the church ensemble; the Transfiguration Cathedral (1714), the Intercession Church (1764) and the bell tower (1874) are original but all the other buildings have been moved here from other islands.

Under restoration at the moment, the Transfiguration Cathedral cannot be visited, only admired from the outside, a fairy tale concoction of stacked octagons crowned with 22 domes clad in thousands of hand cut aspen shingles, it is quite breath-takingly stunning, all the more so when one considers that it was built 300 years ago without nails. Nails were not used as it took 30 minutes to manufacture a nail in the forge and iron or steel was too expensive.

The smaller Intercession Church next door was a "summer" church where we were treated to a fabulous a cappella piece by the choir of three monks. Leaving the church complex we visited a typical farmhouse to get an understanding of the life and times of the villagers. The bathhouse on the lake shore was used as a sauna complete with the birch twigs to stimulate blood flow before running down the jetty to plunge into the frigid waters of Lake Onega.

Nearby is a small chapel where we were treated to a bell ringing; a windmill that could be rotated on its axis "by six men, two cows or an angry country woman"; and beyond that the oldest wooden church in Russia, the Resurrection of Lazarus Chapel, thought to be built in the 14th century.

As night fell, we were transiting up a staircase of 6 locks on the Volga-Baltic Canal. These six locks raised the ship some 80m so they were impressively deep to sail into, even on the 4th deck we were not level with the cill that the ship would have to sail over at the upper end of the lock.

Mandrogy - 29 July 2008

Late in the evening the MS Bunin left the Neva River and set off across the largest lake in Europe, Lake Lagoda, but by the time we woke in the morning we were across the lake and steaming along the river Svir on our way to Mandrogy, arriving just after lunch.

Mandrogy is an interesting settlement; completely destroyed in WWII it was resurrected as a craft collective in 1996 to cater to the tourist boats plying the river between Lakes Onega and Ladoga. It was officially put back on the Russian maps in 1999. All the buildings are built in the traditional wooden style - some log cabin construction, some sawn timber and all the craftsfolk are dressed traditionally as well. Modern life has not been completely forsaken, as there were plenty of cellphones, credit card readers and the occasional computer in evidence.

By 1645 we were all back on board and heading for Lake Onega, the second largest lake in Europe. The river bank landscape was variously pine forest, birch forest, villages, scattered dwellings or abandoned industrial complexes that looked like they were just waiting to be used as the set of an action movie.

About two hours before Mandrogy we had passed through the first lock on the voyage. When we entered the lock there were some work boats and a floating crane there that looked deserted. However, once the lock was filled with water the boats sprang into life and proceeded to carry out a small repair on the lock wall. We simply had to watch and wait until they were finished before we could pass. The interesting thing was that the workman performing the task involving a crane manoeuvring a heavy object into a hole, managed to do so without hard-hat, hi-vis jacket, safety harness or life jacket!

St Petersburg on foot - 28 July 2008

A city tour of St Petersburg was the morning's scheduled entertainment with an optional canal tour or visit to another palace in the afternoon. The city tour primarily consisted of a bunch of photo opportunities without enough time to actually stop and visit anything. St Petersburg was founded in 1703 and was the first European planned city; with long straight streets and canals laid out in an area that was originally swampy marshlands. There are 44 islands connected by hundreds of bridges across the 60 rivers and canals.

It became the de facto capital after Peter the Great moved there and the government and officials had to follow. With the Romanovs falling from grace, the German sounding name was changed to Petrograd until the communist era when it became Leningrad and finally, with a popular vote of over 80%, reverted to the original St Petersburg after the fall of the Soviets. Architecturally, the city is not a world-beater with many buildings that were destroyed in WWII having been replaced by ghastly "Soviet issue" structures.

Nevertheless we eschewed the optional tours and decided to explore the city on foot, returning first to the Church of the Spilt Blood. Built in 1907 over the spot where Alexander II was assassinated, it fell into disrepair after it was decommissioned by the Soviets and turned into, variously, a potato warehouse and set storage for the theatre. Now a museum rather than a church, it has recently been restored, a process which took longer and cost more than it did the first time around and is now absolutely stunningly beautiful, both inside and out. Apart from the marble patterned floor, every other internal surface is covered with mosaic tile Biblical images.

The church is on the banks of one of the canals so we followed canals though the city to the other main tourist church/museum, St Isaacs. This is the fourth highest domed structure in the world and, again, richly decorated throughout - although in a much more reserved style than the first church. For an extra 150 roubles one can climb to the outside of the dome. The number 201 is painted on the bottom step and every 10 steps thereafter the number encouragingly decreases until finally you get to step 0 only to find that they lied as at this point you leave the spiral tower and move outside to climb another 50 steps to the colonnade. Because St Petersburg was built on a swamp the maximum elevation is 3m above sea level which means that there is nothing to interrupt the panoramic view from the colonnade.

Leaving the city we joined the commuter throng on the Metro where they could learn a thing or two from London Underground in terms of signs for finding the line you want and then recognising the stations along the way. In spite of their best efforts to confuse us, we made it back to the river port in good time for our 7 pm sailing and the Captain's champagne reception.

St Petersburg - 27 July 2008

The included tour for the morning was to the Hermitage Museum in central St Petersburg. The current museum curator claims it would take 18 years to see all the exhibits, and although we covered some 6 km of corridors in our visit we only had two hours to snatch a few highlights. Since some parts of the Hermitage were originally a palace, the rooms themselves are treasures regardless of whether they have contents or not. Other "plainer" rooms hold art works. There is a large collection of Rembrandts and an impressive French impressionists and post-impressionists section. Surprisingly, there is only one Carravagio in Russia and it is not a particularly good example of Carravagio's amazing use of light and shade. Two paintings by Da Vinci and another Madonna & Child by Raffaello were originally on wood, but this was not an appropriate backing for the Russian climate so they have had the wood removed from the rear of the paint and then replaced with canvas, all without destroying the masterpiece; absolutely amazing.

Quite incredibly, a 100 rouble permit allows visitors to take pictures throughout, the only restriction being no flash in the art gallery; a restriction disobeyed by many, and certainly not enforced by the babushkas sitting in each room, so the Matisse that was the feature of the Russian exhibition in the Royal Academy in London recently was uncrowded and able to photographed; quite the opposite from when we last saw it. The Hermitage is the largest museum in the world and certainly has an impressive art collection.

A chandelier in one of the first rooms we visited weight 2.5 tonnes and when it was candlelit, the best candles money could buy would only last 40 minutes before the guests had to be moved out of the room, the chandelier lowered and the candles replaced.

There was a choice of three afternoon excursions and we chose Pushkin (or Catherine's) Palace. Almost completely destroyed by a fire lit by the retreating Nazis in WWII it is slowly being restored to its former glory with about half of the 55 impressive reception rooms restored so far. Catherine intended to out-do every other royal in Europe and her golden corridor of 15 or so rooms is certainly mind bogglingly impressive opening, as they do in a continuous sequence of door after door after door. The main hall was one of the first restored and is now due for re-gilding with another 4 kg of gold leaf.


The jewel in the crown, and the only place where photos are not permitted, is the Amber Room. The original panels were spirited away by the Nazis and although seen in German hands in another Russian town shortly thereafter have been "lost", whether on the bottom of the Baltic or into a private collection somewhere is unknown.

Russian cruise - 26 July 2008

One of the current sources of civic pride is St Petersburg is the new ring road motorway around three sides of the city. We were proudly introduced to this as we rode it from the airport to the river port to embark on the MS Bunin. However, not to far along I noticed that all the vehicles in the right-hand lane were actually reversing against the flow of traffic. Just then the guide noticed and commented and then the driver decided that there was good reason for this strange behaviour (a traffic jam ahead) and decided to join the movement. So, our first new experience in Russia was reversing along the motorway to the off-ramp we had just passed.

Taking an alternate route it was not too long before we arrived at the Neva River port where 5 river cruise ships were docked and we were shepherded aboard the Ivan Bunin and assigned our cabins.