Happy Birthday to Me!!! Surprise, Steph brought me coffee in bed and then gave me an unexpected birthday gift, a Russian towel to embroider. This morning we had three briefings, Russian history, Russian language, and disembarkation information. I had minestrone soup, turkey fillet crusted in almond with orange sauce, corn blinis, and ice cream with fruit sauce. My next surprise occurred when the family lured me to Gary and Evelyn's room for wine and sweets and my...

Colorful does not adequately describe Goritsy. The little gingerbread styled homes in this village come in every color that you can imagine. This tiny village was once very rich as it was home to the nunnery where Ivan the Terrible sent his aunt Yefronsinya to a life of seclusion so she could not support her son as a successor to the throne. However even being in exile didn't help her (Ivan was very paranoid) and several other high-born nuns at the convent as Iva...

May 15 - Our port for the next two days is Yaroslavl. This town of 640,000 covers 130 square miles. Yaroslavl was founded in 1010 when Prince Yaroslavl came to this part of the river to establish a church. The mascot of the city is a bear. The legend that led to this is about the time when Prince Yaroslavl came to this area to protect his father's merchant ships from the pillaging pagans, he ventured ashore to reason with the marauders. They captured him and th...

I went to a matryoshka doll painting class this afternoon, paid 250R for the wooden doll and use of the pattern, brushes, and paints. Unfortunately, we only had an hour to finish it. This was fun but I wish we would of had more time to get it done as mine needs at least another hour to finish the base coat and add the decorations. So here she is before she gets dolled up, a little girl dressed in blue jeans and holding a heart. It isn't nearly as artistic as the...

Due to the ice in Lake Onega we stopped for a tour in Vytegra, a ship building village during the years of Peter the Great. We began our tour with a tour of a Russian submarine B-440 Foxtrot. It is a diesel/electric powered submarine that had a crew of around 80. The Foxtrot submarines played a role in the Cuban middle crisis as four of them were deployed by the Soviets. Three of them were forced to surface by the US Navy and one eluded us. They each could carry...