Our cabin on the Nicholai Cherneshevsky, is located on the entry/reception level which is very handy to everything but quite private as the walkway outside the window is hardly ever used. The cabin is very small but fine with a fridge and good shower. The boat carries about 300 passengers and is very pleasant with two restaurants, two bars, conference rooms, and lounge areas. At first we used the bars and had drinks served at meals however we soon discovered that...

We spent three nights in Moscow on board our boat taking tours each day and one night tour. Our friends from Newcastle, England, Helen & Don travelled with us. Moscow traffic is very slow they used to have a great road system before private cars were allowed. Red Square (named from the Russian word beautiful), a cobbled square basically for military parades lies between the Kremlin outer wall and the Gum a large department store similar in ways to the QVB but...

We have been busy cycling around as the weather has been very good. On Thursday we cycled to Kew Gardens and checked out the rhododendrums, not as good as the beautiful and varied specimens at Leonardslee, an amazing garden we visited in West Sussex last weekend. We visited the Temperate House where we were amused by the tall skinny acacias and eucalypts the waterlily house, the Ginko tree and the Wollemi pine which is doing very well. We also smelled the eucalyp...

We left Harry and Meg at Inverness Station (sadly, but we will see them in Oz hopefully by the end of the year). They were off home and we to Glasgow where we had booked into a small hotel on the Kelvin River close to the University and Kelvin Grove Park. This park in the West End adjoins the wonderful Victorian stone terraces of three and four storey homes with strips of park and generous roads between. The public infrastructure ie park railings paths etc have...

A very quick turnaround and we were at Gatwick Airport on Wednesday 15 April to fly to Inverness to meet up with Harry & Meg for our next adventure to the Orkney Islands and the West Coast of Scotland. We drove to Thurso where we stayed at the Royal Hotel before catching the car ferry to Stomness. Stromness is a small town stretching along the edge of the island with stone paved streets, tiny closes (one called Khyber Pass which runs up the hill)and an excell...