Volga Dream, Russia

It's about an hour drive from Moscow City Centre to the harbour port where our ship is docked. From here we will wind our way through the Volga River via canals, rivers and lakes to reach St. Petersburg. For the next 6 days we were water based.

Even the Port is a beautiful old structure, time to set sail, errr, propeller.

There was a couple reasons we ended up choosing the Volga Dream ship for our vacation, first was the fact that they put you up in the heart of the city in both Moscow and St. Petersburg instead of bussing you each day from the ship, the second, and most important was it was a very nice ship that has a maximum of 100 passengers. This meant that it was never too crowded and we never had to wait long when arriving or departing from our ports of call.

Volga Dream cruise line was founded in 2004 when it purchased a former Soviet vessel, Komarno, and overhauled it for use as a commercial river cruise ship. In 2007, following an extensive, two-year refurbishment, the renamed ship was launched as Volga Dream. There is plans for a second Volga Dream ship to launch sometime soon, it's a small Russian company with premier service.

As soon as we board we are treated to a Vodka, Salt and Bread boarding ceremony, you break off a small piece of bread, dip it in salt, then take your vodka shot, and eat the bread... welcome aboard!

Having finished our vodka, we headed down the hallway to check out our room and the ship, nicely finished with wood and brass, it really was quite a nice ship. A large restaurant and lounge, a library, several deck areas you could just sit and relax, even a small gym. Speaking of small, the room wasn't huge, but it had what we needed, a bed, a bathroom, and large windows to look out of.

The first leg of our trip was out of the Moscow Canal and into the Volga River, we didn't even realize this trip was going to consist of a series of locks. Twenty of them to be exact, some days we went up, some days we went down, some days both.

We headed off down the Moscow Canal, and experienced our first dinner of the Volga Dream. Between the tasty Baltic 7 beer and these amazing dinners, I think we would need to do a lot more walking tours.

As the sun set on our first day on the ship, our super slow Internet connection showed me this news flash. Apparently right after we left Moscow, a fierce storm whipped through Moscow, killing 16 people, toppling thousands of trees and damaging several buildings. Very sad for those affected, apparently we left just in time.

5/29

After a nice breakfast we had a leisurely morning just hanging on the deck watching the Russian world go by. I guess it was a little chilly for the non-Canadians, but aside from Dave and Candace from our Imperial group we had the deck mostly to ourselves.

We passed through a few locks, passed by some country homes, passed some fishermen, and even passed by Lenin.

We also passed a lot of uniquely domed churches and cathedrals

One of the more interesting sights we pass was the flooded belfry of Kalyazin, When Joseph Stalin ordered the construction of the Uglich Dam in 1939, the old parts of Kalyazin, including several medieval structures, were submerged under the reservoir's waters.

Hanging on the deck with Andy, Me, and Don, from the infamous Imperial group

We took a short break from the deck of the ship to watch a Russian Tea Ceremony. It was pretty funny as they explained how the tea was served when the 'hard-working husband' came home, but it was too hot, so it was poured into the tea plate and was now just right. There is a special tea pot/cistern used to make the tea, and they added some kind of liqueur to add to the flavour... blecchhh.

Uglich

At 5:30pm we arrived in the town of Uglich on the shores of the Volga river after passing through the Uglich locks.

The town of Uglich is locked in history for a tragic moment in time, on the 15th of May, 1591, Ivan the Terrible's surviving son Dmitry died in the garden. The stories told were that he stabbed himself multiple times with a knife during a seizure, multiple times, in the back. The bells alerted the townspeople who literally tore apart those that were suspected of the murders. Apparently Dmitry's murder was under orders of Boris Gudonov who wanted to establish a new Russian leadership after Ivan the Terrible's death.

From our ship we broke up into our groups, and the 11 of us did a walking tour of the town.

Apparently the town of Uglich also has it's own Kremlin, and after a short walk we are invited out of the rain inside for a small concert.
The range of voices, especially on the Tenor side is haunting. This would be our first opportunity to hear the famous Kalinka song.

The colourful Church of St. Dmitry-on-the blood was built in the 17th century in memory of the young Dmitry. The templar part of the church has preserved ancient wall paintings depicting the death of Dmitry and a massacre of the crowd over the alleged killers. The wall painting in the refectory was done later, depicting scenes of the traditional Biblical legend of Adam and Eve.

From the Church we headed to the Cathedral of the Transfiguration. The Cathedral was erected in 1485 in place of a dilapidated wooden church of the XIII century. In 1730 an octagonal stone bell tower was attached to the cathedral. The remarkable fact is that the bell tower was built on the spot, once occupied by the old wooden church bell tower, from which the bell ringer announced the death of Dmitry to the Uglich people. Later this ill-fated bell, which brought bad news, was given a flogging with a whip just like humans and, like a criminal, exiled to Siberia. After many years of exile, the bell was returned to Uglich and today it can be seen in the Church of St. Dmitry on the Blood.

After leaving the cathedral we are given some free time to explore the town a little, and a small group of us photographer types head straight for the blue domes with stars on the other side of town. This is the striking buildings of the Uglich Monastery.

Yes, that's a nun with a sickle doing gardening in a monastery.

Running out of time, we head back to the ship past the traditional craft displays of Matryoshka dolls, and the typical Lenin statue.

We are back onboard by 7:45, just in time for another fabulous Russian dinner. The tables in the dining room are of varying sizes, from 4-8, and are only labeled with signs stating "English speaking, Spanish speaking, German speaking, etc...", this allows you to choose who you want to sit with each night, and mix it up based on what time you make it for dinner. Tonight we were a little later, most of our Imperial group were already at full tables and we saw two ladies by themselves at an English speaking table. We asked if we could join them, and boy are we glad we did. Judy from Australia and Susan from New Zealand were a blast to spend time with, and we all became good friends over the course of our river cruise.

5/30

Today we would cross the Rybinsk Reservoir and head back into the Volga River.

Yaroslavl

At 9:00am we were already in our next stop, Yaroslavl. Yaroslavl is one of the oldest cities in Russia, established in 1007, and is a UNESCO World Heritage site. Our Imperial group loaded up onto a bus for a tour of the city, this would be the largest city we would see as part of the Volga tour.

Our first stop would be The church of Elijah the prophet, it was completed in 1650 and is famous for it's many brilliant Frescoes.

It was interesting as we had seen some churches and cathedrals that didn't allow photography, either out of respect for the parishioners, or to prevent damage to artwork because some people don't know how to turn their flashes off. This church allowed it if you paid some rubles and got a photo permit, at least that money could be used for some restoration work if needed... take my rubles.

Our next stop in Yaroslavl was the Governor's House which is now an Art Gallery. Unlike so many other churches, museums, buildings and restaurants in Russia, this Gallery didn't require us to check our coats.

Each of the groups was given a personal guide, ours stating she was the daughter of the governor, rumour has it that the mansion is haunted and the guides are ghosts. After a tour of the rooms each with a collection of portraits, we were treated to a short musical concert and then shown traditional dancing of the time. Of course our ghost had to pull me out onto the dance floor to show how I step on toes.

Next on our tour of the city was the Assumption Cathedral. As you walk towards the cathedral, you pass a monument to the fallen soldier. Every day local school girls will don their uniforms and weapons to stand guard at the monument in tribute.

The first wooden Assumption cathedral was built here in 1215, destroyed by fire it was then rebuilt in the 16th Century and was completely destroyed again in the 20th Century by the Soviets. In 2005. It was decided to rebuild the cathedral again and was completed in just five years. It's golden domes just glow from every angle.

The bells from the original Cathedral of 1215 are still on display.

From the Cathedral we walked to the waterfront square, beautifully redone for their 1000th birthday.
Canada is celebrating their 150th this year, we are just babies in the world.

It was another short walk to a historic hall, where we were serenaded with some traditional Russian folk songs. Of course once they were finished the CD's were available, either Russian Folk or Russian Religious, or the special combination gift pack.

Our final stop for the Yaroslavl tour was the 12th century Territory of the Transfiguration Monastery.

Inside the Treasures of Yaroslavl exhibit we would see many more frescoes and Russian Icons we weren't allowed to take pictures of without a photo permit. Orlyn and Karen from our group bought the permit and sent me some pics to use.

Back on our way, we passed the Volkov Theater, it was founded in 1750 by the local actor Fyodor Volkov, it is officially the country's oldest theatre. This theatre was the first to perform Hamlet in Russia, and Volkov himself was known for his radical interpretations of classical roles. He was actually so well known that Catherine the Great heard about him and invited Volkov to St Petersburg to perform and help her build her own theatre.

We passed a few more interesting sights on our way back to the boat, including a recreation of a church tower without the church, and colourful love lock trees. Yaroslavl was definitely a highlight of our Russian adventures.

After what already seemed like a cram packed day of adventure, we were back on board by 12:45, just in time for lunch!

While we sat out on the deck again watching the Russian landscape go by, some of our group were in a Matryoshka doll painting class. They completely missed the James Bond style Hydrofoil that passed our ship in a cloud of water spray.

Our Russian culture would come with our 1st Russian language class. The hardest part about the Russian language was trying to figure out their Cyrillic alphabet, what the heck is Б, б, Г, Д, Ж, З, И, Л, and Ф? At least we learned to say Da, Net, Privet and Spasiba. Let's not even talk about our first attempts to sing the classic Russian song Kalinka.

Trying to clear our heads after the Russian language class, we headed back out on the deck, and knew we must be getting close to a city. Sure enough, we passed by the small city of Rybinsk.

No sooner had we passed Rybinsk and we were in another Lock to move us into the huge Rybinsk reservoir.

Leaving the Rybinsk lock we see the huge statue of Mother Volga looking out across the reservoir, the statue that is almost 250 feet tall was built in tribute to those that helped build the series of locks along the Volga river.

Another amazing Russian dinner, the presentation was spectacular, but quickly forgotten when we saw the sunset out the windows. As we were getting further north, the sunsets seemed to last longer, and sunrise seemed to be occurring earlier and earlier.
(we never woke up intentionally for that)

One of the behind the scenes tours was offered after dinner, a chance to see the Galley where all the meals were prepared and cooked, I'm sure it would have been impressive if not every single passenger from the ship was in the Kitchen at the same time. I accidentally leaned on the light switch and ducked out of the cram-packed space.

5/31

We continued across the Rybinsk reservoir overnight towards the Sheksna River and White Lake, our next stop.

After a leisurely breakfast we had a lecture on Russian Fairy Tales, and learned that although the characters are slightly different the stories across cultures are very similar. They were all about morals, especially funny when acted out by the passengers.

Goritsy

At 10:00am we docked in Goritsy and loaded a bus to go see the Kirilov-Belozersky Monastery which is 10 minutes away.

It is one of the oldest and largest monasteries in Northern Russia. It was founded in 1397 on the shores of Lake Beloye (White). The vast walled area of the monastery comprises two separate priories with eleven churches, most of them dating to the 16th century.

It was a dreary day, which maybe took a little bit away from the colours of some of the archways. Although historic, it really was kind of a dreary old place.

We were interested to see inside the monks quarters, but turns out it was just a series of rooms with Russian Icons, which was great, but we were starting to get our fill of the gold inlayed halos that surround old religious paintings, or maybe that was just me.

I can't even describe the horrors that this drawing is trying to portray, perhaps those monks needed to get out more?

Old gravestones have been used to create the walkways, not sure that's right.

The White Lake side of the monastery, no-one was swimming here.

Happy to get out of the rain, we loaded back into the bus where we would get some time to check out some of the crafts of the locals, we skipped that part and got back on the boat where we could dry off.

Back on board by 12:30, and had lunch with some of our new friends, only to find out that our local tour guide forgot to show us inside the cathedral like other groups did, she spent so much time showing us the icons, gahhh.

Maria, our Cruise director, teaches Andy and Susan how to count to ten in Russian.

That afternoon was our 2nd Russian language class, a refresher, plus numbers and songs continued. Today's lesson was very useful, it was about restaurants and shopping. Votka (ВОДКА), Piva (ПИВО) and Vino (ВИНО). Most importantly, Skolka Stoit (How much does it cost?), Bozhe Moy (Oh My God!), Doraga (It's expensive), Khachoo Skidkoo (I want a discount).

During class we passed the Semi-destroyed church Krokhino. In 1961 Sheksna Reservoir that became part of the Volga-Baltic Waterway, was created. The water level of the river rose by 5 meters and the town of Krokhino was completely flooded. Houses and residents were moved to other settlements. Only the Christmas Church that had been situated on the elevation stayed above the water level.

This photo from 1909 shows what the church used to look like.

Tonight was the festival of Russian Cuisine dinner and Vodka tasting show. Most of the crew were dressed up in their best Russian fineries.

I can't remember if the dinner was good, I think it contained some caviar, the event of the night was the vodka tasting...
There was three types; regular, pepper and Beluga vodkas, each was drank in a different way as demonstrated by Vasily. The first regular vodka was drank the traditional way with a "Vashe zrodovye" or "Tvoye zdorovye!", which means "To your health!". The second vodka was a pepper vodka, and had a bit of a bite, it was drank balanced on the back of your hand. The final vodka was much smoother, a beluga vodka, it was also the hardest to drink, you had to hold the glass in the crook of your elbow, I managed to get it down quickly but a lot of people dropped their glasses, spilled all over themselves or didn't even try.

The other part of the night was the final judging of the painted Matryoshka Dolls from earlier in the cruise, we all voted for Andy's doll from our group, but alas he did not win. There was some talented doll painters on this boat.

The biggest problem of the Russian night was that they had White Russians/Black Russians as the drinks of the night, I'm not sure how many we ended up having, but it continued until we were the last ones in the lounge at the end of the night.

6/1

Happily for all of us, we wouldn't arrive at our next stop until the afternoon, so we had a quiet morning. Norine went to a Russian Cooking class to learn how to make Blinis and Pelmenis, and I chilled out on the deck while we crossed Onega Lake, Europe's second largest..

Just before lunch there was an opportunity for the Captains bridge tour, so we got a chance to see the control room for our ship and ask some questions. Only problem, the captain doesn't speak English, Maria our translator did her best.

Kizhi Island

At 3:30pm we finally reach Kizhi island, we have come North a fair ways, and are now at the same latitude as Anchorage, Alaska. More importantly, we arrive to see two more of those funky James Bond like hydrofoils. They are tour boats from one of the nearby towns.

From the dock its a short walk into the historic village of Kizhi Island, just follow the signs. Dating back to the 15th century, during the 16th century Kizhi Island produced lumber and iron for over 100 villages, then slowly became forgotten until the mid 1900's. Starting in 1960 the island became a reserve for Karelian style and northern Russian historical wooden buildings and was declared a World Heritage site by UNESCO in 1990.

The highlight of the Island is the 22-dome Transfiguration Church, it was built in 1714 from locally cut pine logs using a notching technique that allowed the entire church to be built without using 1 nail. It served as the year-round religious center of this lake until 1764.

What the Transfiguration Church looked like before the restoration began.

In 1764 this smaller 9-domed Church of the Intercession was built for winter use, and in 1862 the bell tower was constructed to tie the two places of worship together.

Kizhi Island is basically an open air museum, with around 85 wooden structures including traditional homes, barns, saunas, and windmills scattered around the island to explore.

Of course a stop in Russia wouldn't be a stop if we didn't have an opportunity to look at some more Russian religious icons.

Note the special timber locks that they use to hold the two separate sections of the house together.

This tiny church is the Church of the Resurrection of Lazarus, built by the monk Lazarus from 1286-1391, it is regarded as the oldest remaining wooden church in Russia. Every summer pilgrims would come to this church as it was said to miraculously cure illness. Lazarus was declared as a local saint.

Our group was allowed to enter the Chapel of the Archangel Michael built in 1750, it contains icons of the 17-18th century, when we left the chapel, we were treated to a musical serenade of the church bells.

Throughout the island we meet craftsmen, mostly woodworkers creating shingles for the church or carved wooden toys and decorations. We are pretty sure this guy has been using sharp tools for a long time as he is a few fingers short.

After one last little hike to look over the rise at the other side of the island, we headed back to our ship.

We were back on board by 7:15pm, just in time for another dinner. The desserts hinted at tonights entertainment, a Classical Piano concert by Vasily Golub, a variety of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff to continue to build up our Russian cultural experience.

Perhaps the funniest moment of the cruise was Orlyn talking about how the toilet water in our ship bathrooms was a little yellow all the time, "I woke up in the middle of the night, couldn't tell If I had gone already, so I went back to bed."

6/2

Mandrogi

When we woke up we had already left the massive Onega lake and were on the Svir River heading towards our final town visit of the cruise. By 10:00am we were in Mandrogi. The original town of Mandrogi was razed to the ground during World War 2, and this town was built as a replica of a traditional Russian settlement between 1996 and 1999. We are free to explore this craftsman style village on our own.

Throughout the town is little workshops/museums, with craft stores, painting, wood carving, weaving, lacework, and pottery.

The most popular museum is the Museum of Russian Vodka, with over 2,800 different types of vodka from all over Russia.

There is an old village portion of the town, and as we explore we start talking to a blacksmith. He asks us where we are from, when we say Vancouver, Canada, he exclaims "Vancouver Canucks!"... then runs and gets his hockey stick and his Russian hockey jersey to show us. He then goes on to tell us Russian players who played there, Mogilny, Bure, Larionov...

There was even a little rope pull ferry to take you over to a fairy-tale island.

We knew it was time to head back when we started to get the hard sell from a Russian that had lived in America for a while. He was pushing everything from oddball trinkets to lucky coins that he welded tiny metal mice to. He thought for sure he had a sale when he showed us the Loonie (Canadian dollar coin) with a mouse stuck to it... he couldn't be more wrong.

One last look around the shops, "Oh look, more Matryoshka dolls for sale", and we were back on board by 1:15pm, just in time for lunch.

The afternoon would be our 3rd and final Russian language lesson, a recap of the previous two lessons, a final test, which we aced, and a final rehearsal for our Volga Dreamers choir, which apparently would perform later that night.

Before our farewell reception began, we had a Captain's briefing... Apparently the waves on the Ladoga lake crossing were over 5 meters, which is too big for our ship, and we won't be able to cross tonight. So instead of sailing right into St Petersburg, we are just stopping at the town of Svirstroy, and we will bused at 6am to St Petersburg. Some people are very upset, I'm sure they would be the first ones complaining about being sea-sick and being thrown around the ship. It's all about our safety, an early wake up call is a small price to pay.

Finally it was time for the Captains Farewell reception, we were all given champagne, toasts were made, and farewells were made.

The Imperial group; Candace, Orlyn, Andy, Barb, Don, Frances, Karl, and Dave (Missing Karen)

The Russian waitresses, our cruise director and the ship manager sang a funny goodbye song to us, and our Russian trained group, the Volga Dreamers, sang Kalinka back to them and the rest of the passengers.

I am sure everyone needed another drink after that song was done, so it was off to the Dining Room for the Captain's Farewell dinner. Our last dinner on the Volga Dream, so we wanted to spend it with Susan and Judy, and Susan's friend the Maitre d' Dean.

Our last dinner was spectacular, and we had some good laughs on our last night before heading our separate ways into St Petersburg.

The bus to St Petersburg

After a 5am wake up call on the ships loud speaker, we roll out of bed, have a light breakfast and leave our beautiful ship for the last time. We are given a parting gift of a bagged lunch; a ham and cheese sandwich, a bottle of water, and an apple, then we load into a bus and hit the road for a 3 hour drive to St. Petersburg, a chance to see a different part of Russia.