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(excerpts from a letter)
Les and I are glad to be back home after a wonderful Russian river cruise. Our friends, Mary and ‘Woody’, had already planned the trip and date when we learned about it, sent our passports to D.C. for our Visas, and joined them.
Lufthansa is non stop from here to Frankfurt so after changing planes there we arrived at the ship (the M/S Konstantin Korotkov) in St. Petersburg. The ship was our home for the next 10 days and nights.
The passengers were divided into 4 language groups for the dining room and tours: Russian, Finland, Norway and English speaking. In our group were Canadian, Australian, USA and Israel residents.
St. Petersburg is a beautiful city. Our 2 guides gave a lot of history in touring the Hermitage, Catherine the Greats’ Palace, and Peterhof (Peter the Greats’ Russian Versailles.) Their priceless treasures were removed before the bombings in WW 2. After 2 days there we sailed on the Neva River.
Each day we stopped to tour a village, or a very old church, or city. We were told that there are 33 letters in the Russian alphabet and I was not able to pronounce or spell the places we saw (Mandrogl, Vytegra, Goritsy, Yaroslavl, Uglich, were a few.) The ship went through several locks and got on the Volga River into Moscow.
The weather was beautiful every day. Breakfast was buffet, lunch was sometimes a box lunch to take on the tour but each evening was a four course dinner served by lovely young Russian girls in native costumes.
Each night on different decks they had a Cossack Show, folk music, live band music, and our favorite was the fourth deck Piano bar. Les, and Woody & Mary are musicians and they thought the pianist was the best they had heard. The last city before Moscow (Uglich) was begun in 1010 and they are restoring and painting cathedrals for their 1,000 year celebration next year.
We had 2 busy days in Moscow before flying home. The things I remember most were their beautiful Metro, Red Square, the Kremlin, and McDonald’s . It is huge, there are maybe 20 or more cash registers. When I got a coke there were at least 8 or more customers lined up at each one. They said there are 8 million passengers that use the metro daily. Stations are deep underground and each of the different lines is a different art gallery.
I would go again if we could have the same guides, the same beautiful weather and good health.
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