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, three daughters, and three granddaughters. She showed us her well, numerous gardens and fruit trees, a large family of rabbits that I don't think were pets, sand her lovely clean home. She had many large piles of firewood outside as her house was heated with wood, she did have an electric washing machine. Tamara welcomed us to her home with a shot of "moonshine" with a toast to our health (na zdaROvie), a home made brew made from potatoes, spices, water, and sugar. It was very mild tasting, but very potent as we were all very happy! She served tea with the hot water being dispensed from a Silver Russian samovar. We were served rye bread with cucumbers and fruit pie bread. (A large yeast sweet bread baked with a layer of homemade cherry pie filling from her own trees.) Delicious! This was interspersed with many round of moonshine. We sang her our vocabulary song and she serenaded us with the Volga Boat song. We all shared pictures of grandchildren and introduced her to our families who were traveling together. Our hour together flew by very quickly.
The town of Uglich was established in 937 and it's name is derived from the word ugol which means angle or corner and since the village sits on a bend of the Volga river, that makes a lot of sense. The town is famous for it's watches and cheese and often visitors refer to it as little Switzerland and many of our travelers bought beautiful watches at this stop.
We visited the Cathedral of Transfiguration and were serenaded by five young men with pitch perfect voices. The acoustics in the chapel were awe inspiring.
We then ended our tour with a fifteen minute walk back to the ship through a vendor shopping district. My only wish is that this stop could have been longer, but we had a lock schedule to adhere to.
Tonight we celebrated our last night of cruising with a champagne toast with the Captain. For our last dinner we had wine, caviar, smoked salmon, salad, mushroom casserole, three different entrees of which I had the filet of beef, and the finale of the meal was the parade of all the kitchen staff with the baked Alaska.
For entertainment tonight, I sang three Russian songs with the academic choir, danced a Russian folk dance with eight other couples, Brian read the travelers prayer, two male vocalists sang, the Czarinas played an lyre harp and sang, one man from each of the four groups played the Russian spoons, Lydia read hysterical signs from other countries, and we ended with a group song. Many endorphins were produced by all the laughter. A very fun evening.