Sergiev Posad is one of the major religious centers in the country. The road we used to drive here is known as the road to pilgrimage. This monastery was started by a monk Sergius who thought his fellow monks were not as religious as they could be, so he left his old monastery. On this pilgrimage, he had a dream and in the dream an angel told him that where he was currently asleep was the place to start a monastery, so when he woke up he started the constructio...

May 18 - We arrived in Moscow today, and took off for our tour of the Kremlin. Very impressive, lots of security gates and inspections, no photos allowed due to many reasons however the main one Tanya told us was because they sell photos, books, etc. and can make more money from tourists this way. After the Kremlin tour we arrive at the hotel, had a brief tour of the area, and decided to go to a Czech Restaurant for dinner so we chose the Pilsner. After walking ...

Our first night in Moscow, a brief nap after our Czech restaurant experience, and we are off to see Moscow by night. This is a late excursion that starts at 9:30 and ended around 1AM. We started by seeing a high rise building built with money from Arm and Hammer and then we were going to walk along a pedestrian walkway above the road, however it was locked so we took an alternative route through a restaurant, but they didn't like that (it was a real fancy restaur...

Three hours after we left Uglich we cruised through a divided city that was created when the river was flooded for the creation of this waterway. According to our guides, the people in this section were given very little notice of the waterway plans and when the dam was created and the river flooded parts of the city, the steeple you see here was the only remaining edifice from that "improvement."

May 17 - A beautiful day on the River Volga. We left the ship early in order to join a Russian family for breakfast and were welcomed by the city with bread and salt. Our group of 14 went to the home of Tamara, who's husband was off fishing. She didn't speak a word of English, but we were armed with our Russian "cheat sheet" and through many gestures and Brian's own interpretation we were able to have a lively discussion. Tamara's family consisted of two sons, th...