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Trip Report: Russian River Cruise -- Part I
I promised to write up a report about our 2004 Russian River Cruise,
and, later than promised, here it is. I ended up going into far more detail than I anticipated, but I had fun remembering the trip so I kept adding information. Travelers whose only contact with Russia will be a visit to St. Petersburg as part of Baltic cruise may want to skip reading this installent. It's quite long and it focuses on our independent land trip to Moscow and our river cruise. I will post the second installment focusing St. Petersburg ASAP. I've written a balanced report; I include the good along with not-so-good. Karen Selwyn Our trip to Russia included 3 1/2 days of independent travel in Moscow and a two-week river cruise from Moscow to St. Petersburg. The river cruise was with a university group on board the M.S. Litvinov, a boat built for navigating the combination of rivers and canals that connect these two cities. We stopped at several small towns along the way that are primarily famous for their monasteries and churches including Uglich, Yaroslavl, and Goritsy. Our favorite stop en route was Kizhi, an island community which was originally home to two great provincial wooden churches. These churches have become the focus for an assembly of residential wooden structures -- houses and barns. Our trip was absolutely fascinating. Traditional tourist destinations like castles or art museums are over the top in Russia. For example, we believe the Hermitage beats the Prado, the Metropolitan, and the Louvre for quality along with quantity, as well as the sheer opulence of the galleries. Catherine’s Palace makes Versailles pale in comparison. While the Amber Room is probably the most famous room within Catherine’s palace, room after room has an equivalent level of opulence with a different decorating scheme. In Versailles, the Hall of Mirrors is justifiably famous, but that level of opulence is not sustained throughout the palace. However, a word like “enjoy” doesn’t to apply to a trip to Russia. Putting aside the inevitable glitches that occur with any long, complicated, and physically demanding trip, there was an over-riding contemporary issue that colored all our sightseeing. The people of Russia are truly unhappy with democracy, and I worry about what that means for the future. There is more poverty in Russia today than in the Communist era. During our time in Russia, we read many newspaper articles indicating the majority of citizens look longingly back at the time when the state took care of them. There is more crime in today’s Russia, and, again, the people long for a nation where personal safety is guaranteed at the expense of values we cherish in America. Concepts like “choice” and “freedom” are not important compared to stability and predictability. This was a complete contrast to the attitudes we sensed during our time spent in China in 2002. During our independent time in Moscow, we stayed at the Marriott Royal Aurora, a hotel located approximately 2 blocks from the Bolshoi Theater, four blocks from the main commercial street in Moscow, and a fifteen minute walk from Red Square. The location was great, most of the employees spoke English reasonably well, and the room was spacious, modern, and clean. One disquieting note: At our hotel -- as at all tourist hotels and better restaurants -- a group of burly black-suited guards patrol the entrances day and night. I estimate that no place we visited had fewer than four guards at any time, and the hotels had more with guards patrolling the interior, including the lobby and guarding the elevator to the guest rooms. We chose to view these guards as deterrence that nothing would happen rather than first-responders when something would happen. As a result, we were never frightened. Our arrival day, we never can do more than stroll around and this trip was no exception. Our strolling was complicated by the fact that the hotel supplied a map with the names of streets written in transliterated English, or Latin as the Russians would say. However, none of the signage in Moscow was in English, only in Cyrillic. (When we got to St. Petersburg did we see our first dual language street signs, and, then, only the main streets were so marked.) Our only specific destination was Yeliseevsky, the amazingly elegant grocery store on Tverskaya, the main commercial street. One of my travel magazines had included this as one of the ten great markets of the world, and after seeing it I can’t argue. Crystal chandeliers and baroque plaster carvings coupled with every imaginable delicacy make this a destination grocery store! That night, we dined at CDL; the initials stand for the Cyrillic words “House of Writers.” This restaurant occupies an elegant 19th century mansion. The heavy carved wood paneling, tapestries, and a musicians balcony – complete with a string quartet serenading diners – made our visit a special experience. The menu was vast including a sub-menu of Italian specialties from a period when the restaurant had a visiting chef. The menu was written in both Cyrillic and French. I cannot read or speak Russian, but my French is quite good so my husband and I had no trouble arriving at our choices. Ordering was a bit more problematic as our waiter’s English was very, very, very limited. (In fact, I was brought the wrong appetizer because the waiter the word “Russian” appears in two different options and I was brought the other choice.) Since I suspect English-speaking tourists account for a large percentage of the restaurant’s clientele, I was surprised that the maitre d’ whose English was quite good didn’t make himself available at crucial times when English would have been appreciated by both parties. The food was delicious. On the ride back to the hotel, we saw Red Square for the first time. Awesome. The brilliantly illuminated onion domes of St. Basil’s cathedral is a sight I’ll never forget. The next day, we met Ludmilla, the guide who had been hired through the hotel’s concierge service. We drove outside the city to the house where Lenin lived in the last years of his life. In addition, the contents of Lenin’s office in the Kremlin have been transferred to another building on the grounds of the estate, and we visited there, too. Fascinating experience on many levels. Although the house/museum used to be one of the major pilgrimage destinations in the Communist era, few people visit there now. My husband and I were the only two people visiting. As a result, the curator took us behind the ropes, and we were able to handle some things like Lenin’s personal photo album. Equally fascinating because pre-revolution, the house belonged to the wealthiest industrialist in Russia, and the size of the house was eloquent testimony to his wealth. In each room, the furniture was covered with simple striped cotton slipcovers. Ludmilla persuaded the curator to lift a corner of many of the slipcovers in each room. The furniture was mahogany with bronze decoration and the fabric was opulent brocade. Apparently, Lenin had an interesting threshold; he felt completely comfortable occupying room after room after room, but he drew the line at looking at furnishings that were anything but proletariat. That night, we ate at Beloye Solntse Pustyni (White Sun of the Desert), a restaurant serving food from Uzbekistan. Having eaten Turkish food, we found the Uzecki food to be quite familiar and delicious. The big glitch that night was that the connection between Russian banks and the bank issuing our charge card was down. The restaurant would not accept our charge card. We had enough cash to cover the cost of the meal and the taxi back to the hotel. However, we had cash flow problems for two more days since the US was celebrating the Fourth of July holiday and we had reached our limit from the cash machine until a new business day. We began to use some of our US money even though the exchange rate was pretty bad. We just chalked this up to the mixed joys of travel. (I’m sure that people who travel almost exclusively by cruise ship, are congratulating themselves on the wisdom of their choice after reading some of our struggles after only two days in Russia. We’re willing to accept a certain degree of effort when we travel for benefits we perceive.) The third day, we took a tour of the Moscow subways. If you’ve ridden the subways in NY, Boston, or even Washington DC you have a wholly inadequate vision of the Moscow subways. At least among the older stations, think chandeliers – a different design for each station. Think stained glass. Think bronze reliefs. Think decorative ceramic tiles. Think frescoes. After riding for about an hour, we headed to the Kremlin, via the beautiful Alexander Gardens, to visit the Diamond Fund. This is not the display of crown jewels and state treasures. Those items are on display at the Armory, and that would be a destination with our group tour. The Diamond Fund is a display of Russian diamonds, both loose stones of all carat weights and jewelry. One amazing necklace was made up of modular components. Fully assembled, the diamonds covered most of the wearer’s chest in an ornate and dazzling display. This same necklace – there was a copy made to demonstrate the process – could be disassembled to produce a discreet pendant that an ordinary person could wear with jeans to head to the grocery store. I recognized bracelets, pins, earrings, necklaces, and tiaras, but I couldn’t identify something that looked like 2" wide strips of diamond lace. Ludmilla, told me to look at the minute hooks along the edges of the strips. It really was diamond lace. The hooks were used to sew the diamond lace to clothes. If we ever needed a reminder about the disparity between the pre-revolutionary aristocrats and the serfs, the Diamond Fund was ample evidence. We wondered if the state jewels could top this display. In a word, “yes.” In the afternoon, we took a backstage tour of the Bolshoi Theater. The season had ended the week before. Normally, these backstage tours are offered only during the performance season, but somehow, Ludmilla had persuaded the Bolshoi powers-that-be to run a tour. She is one of few Russian guides who is certified to bring guests into the Bolshoi, and, even then, she is not permitted to give the tour. She simply translates the Bolshoi employee’s talk. (In fact, this two-person approach is typical of many Russian tourist sites. Although the English-speaking guide is licensed and qualified to explain specific destinations, Russian guides provide the commentary at each destination with the personal guides doing the translating.) While we visited the main stage of the Bolshoi, I whipped through a couple of ballet steps, and I can say in all honesty that I have performed ballet on the stage of the Bolshoi! Since the building is quite old, there are lots of places that are a bit risky to access and the number of people in a tour group is quite limited. I doubt a mainstream cruise line would be able to offer a Bolshoi tour as an excursion. In addition, last summer the Bolshoi closed for renovation, a process that is expected to take years. Our last half-day of independent travel, we went to Old Arbat, the pedestrian shopping street and to GUM near Red Square. We bought a Palekh laquer box and an amber bracelet at a state-sponsored store which gave us confidence that both items are legit. (Amber is amazingly easy to fake, or, more likely, to heat to meld small chunks of amber together to produce large, pricier pieces of amber.) We were able to use our charge card at the state-sponsored store, although this was not always the case in all stores on this street. For those old enough to remember the Cold War-era descriptions of shoddy merchandise and empty shelves at GUM, the present version is a revelation. Name every designer label, and you will find it somewhere in Moscow, most often at GUM. (In St. Petersburg, we bought an amber necklace in the main gift shop of the Hermitage. As for the bracelet we bought in Svir'stroy, a tiny town on our cruise... Suffice it to say that we are calling that amber "theoretical amber." Still, I love the design of the bracelet, and I get compliments when I wear the bracelet. The amber jewelry at the gift shop of Catherine’s Palace had the most sophisticated designs, along with the most expensive possibilities. We were with our group and did not have the time needed to make an intelligent choice at any price.) Then, we drove to the northern river port where we boarded the M.S. Litvinov and met our tour group. If you’ve sailed the Yangtze River, you would recognize the our ship. The Litvinov is one of hundreds of seemingly identical river ships working the river and canal route between Moscow and St. Petersburg. At any port, the ships are tied up alongside of one another, sometimes stacked four deep. Passengers on the outside ships walk through the other ships to get to the pier. The Litvinov provides a spartan, but serviceable, cruise experience. The ship has familiar cruise elements: bars on many decks, a theater, a gift shop, a spa whose only service was massages, a beauty parlor, and a medical office. Breakfasts were buffet-style, but lunches and dinners were served by the wait staff. Dinner times were fixed. The food is acceptable. At each meal, one dish rose to the really wonderful level, and I don’t recall anything truly awful. However, eating is not the raison d’etre to be on a river cruise in Russia. There is some effort to accommodate genuine health issues with food, but, at sign-up time, it was made very, very clear that mere preference was not enough to request foods other than the daily choices. Lunch consisted of a salad, a choice of entree, and a dessert. Dinner consisted of a choice of appetizer, a soup or salad, a choice of entree, and a dessert. The worst part of our river cruise was the fact that the ship was our hotel while in port in Moscow for three days and in St. Petersburg for two days. The location of these two ports necessitated an hour-long drive through painfully congested traffic to get to the sites. After the first day of getting more and more frustrated with the appalling traffic and waste of time, some people found large and small ways to cope. For example, lunch was offered on board ship all but one day in Moscow. That meant adding an extra drive back to the ship and, again, into the city for the afternoon tours. Many of us stayed in town on our own, paid for lunch in restaurants, and met the group at the afternoon destination. Others used the subway to go to and from the ship at mid-day, to take advantage of the already-paid-for lunch. One afternoon the tour group ate lunch in Moscow at the Café Pushkin. The traffic between the Tchaikovsky Conservatory and the restaurant turned a fifteen minute ride into an ordeal with no end in sight. Everyone in our bus simply got out and walked. My husband and I would much rather have stayed in a hotel in Moscow – obviously, we would have stayed in the same hotel during our independent travel portion – and transferred to the ship only when we set sail. The convenience of unpacking only once was outweighed by big city travel frustrations. (The following anecdote should help readers calibrate their tolerance for independent travel. One day in Moscow, my husband and I managed to shoehorn a visit to the Impressionist collection to the Pushkin museum during the time period when the group was officially eating lunch back on the boat. We prepared by having our guide write out the name of the Pushkin Museum in Cyrillic on a pamphlet for the All-Russian Museum of Decorative and Folk Arts, our post-lunch destination. When the group got on the bus after our morning tour of Red Square, we broke away, and walked up the main commercial street until we found a clean- and appealing-looking casual restaurant. After eating, we walked to a taxi rank. Using the European number system for the hours of the day and a schematic to suggest we wanted to go one place and, then, another at specific times, we negotiated a taxi fare. We weren’t entirely sure we had been understood, but our desire to go to the Pushkin was sufficiently great that we were willing to take the chance. Everything worked beautifully. The taxi was waiting for us outside the Pushkin at the appointed time and we met the group as planned. We also felt the collection of Impressionist art at the Pushkin was worth the effort and expense.) Comments about some of the tourist attractions in Moscow: Kremlin: There are a limited number of entry points with metal detectors into the Kremlin. Russian policy allows Russian citizens to cut in line ahead of tourists. This made for a very irritating situation since the day we visited the Kremlin, only one entry point was operating. We were on line over an hour. While waiting we fumed that nothing was worth this wait, but seeing the collection of state jewels, carriages, and clothing in the Armory proved us wrong. We’ve been to Versailles and Windsor, and their collections seem positively low-budget compared to the contents of Armory. In particular, we were overwhelmed by the carriages some of which had inlaid patterns of diamond and pearls. One of the rulers -- possibly Czarina Elizabeth –- wore a different dress every day of her life. When she died, there were only 3 rubles in the nation’s treasury. We did not go into Lenin’s tomb. We did stop at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier which honors not only an unidentified soldier, but also the defenders of six “heroic cities” who fought the Nazis. We went to only one of the churches within the Kremlin proper because of the lines to enter each church. These churches are in addition to St. Basil’s Cathedral, the familiar onion-domed church located in Red Square outside the walls of the Kremlin. The Kremlin church's wall of icons was amazingly ornate as befitted a church patronized by the czars. We were intrigued by the fact that these churches still remained since so many churches were torn down during the Communist era. We were told that the Communist leaders loved having the opulent left-over places from the centuries of the czars as their private playgrounds, and that they loved to visit the Armory, in particular. Moscow Circus: A pleasant enough way to spend an evening. With Cirque du Soleil shows performing all over the world, the Moscow Circus is no longer the unique attraction it once was. Certainly, the production values of a Cirque du Soleil performance outshine those of the Moscow Circus. Happily, the quality of each act was excellent. While in Moscow, we also toured the Novodevichy and Donskoy Monasteries, along with the Novodevichy cemetery. This is the Russian equivalent of Pere Lachaise cemetery. The biggest tourist draws are Krushchev’s and Raisa Gorbachev’s graves. We were fascinated by the markers of graves from the non-religious Communist era. We visited the Tchaikovsky Conservatory where we heard a wonderful piano recital, and the Tretyakov Gallery, a museum of Russian art ranging from 11th century icons to Social Realism and contemporary art. Our tour focused on the Russian Symbolist art which is a collection of importance in art histoyr but is virtually unknown outside of Russian. Interesting. However, I would have preferred spending time seeing the contemporary art; I like Chagall, Malevich, and Kandinsky, and the Tretyakov has major collections of all these artists. Comments about our ports during the river cruise: We stopped at Uglich, Yaroslavl, Goritsky, Svirstroy, and Kizhi Island. Each of the stops was enjoyable, but visitors should be prepared for a certain amount of repetition. Of course the Transfiguration Monastery in Yaroslavl is different from the Kirillow-Belozersk Monastery in Goritsky, but by the fourth stop at a provincial monastery the experience became somewhat predictable. This reaction may be an issue of prior knowledge. When my husband and make our annual visits to Italy, we understand that there is a lot of repetition among the hill towns of Tuscany, for example, or among Romanesque churches. However, we know enough about Italian art and architecture that minor variations are a source of interest and pleasure to us. Our knowledge of Russian iconography is minuscule so we were not at the stage where minor variations were always apparent or fascinating. The commentary of the guides became paramount to make our experiences enjoyable. The notable exception to this was in Kizhi where we could see the difference between the naturalistic way the religious figures were depicted and the stylized depictions at most of the other churches. The most enjoyable element of these small towns was the brief concert we heard in each church. The acoustics were routinely phenomenal which made the concert of folk or religious music absolutely goose-bump producing. Part II featuring St. Petersburg to follow – eventually. |
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Karen,
Wow! It's trite, but it's all I can say. What an informative and delightful report. Thanks for taking the time to go back, prepare this and share it. We just booked our trip, which includes a Baltic cruise, so I will join others looking forward to your St. Petersburg installment. No pressure, but I selfishly hope "eventually" means before July, LOL! Thank you, Diana Ball near Houston, TX "Karen Selwyn" wrote in message news:WTZle.4847$%Z2.1172@lakeread08... I promised to write up a report about our 2004 Russian River Cruise, |
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D Ball wrote:
Wow! It's trite, but it's all I can say. What an informative and delightful report. Thanks for taking the time to go back, prepare this and share it. You're welcome. We just booked our trip, which includes a Baltic cruise, so I will join others looking forward to your St. Petersburg installment. No pressure, but I selfishly hope "eventually" means before July, LOL! I can share what follows immmediately. It's not complete, but it will "nourish" you until I can write up more, and it does contain useful information for cruisers. I wrote some of this in response to others asking about St. Petersburg previously: If you can find a tour that includes admission to the Hermitage earlier than the general public's opening time, choose that NO MATTER WHAT THE COST. We spent seven hours in the museum -- essentially one full day out of our three days in St. Petersburg -- and considered it a day well spent. Our tour group had a head start with a 9:30 a.m. admission to the museum, and our comfort level was much higher the first three or four hours of the visit because the crowds were much smaller. Our guided tour began with the Dutch masters and continued chronologically up to the Impressionist collection. If we had any wait to view a picture, it was so fleeting that it doesn't register a year later. We even felt the benefit of our head start for an additional hour or two. When we began viewing the post-Impressionist and modern art, were already deeper into the museum, and the crowds weren't bad. Since my husband has a vision problem, he didn't get a good enough look at some of the pictures on our guided tour, so we looped back for a second look. By now, we were in the crush of the crowds, and we had to wait for tour groups to step away from paintings to get a good view. During this time, we encountered groups from Oceania, Celebrity, and HAL in the Hermitage; I don't believe I saw any of these groups during our early admission period. I can only repeat what I've already said about The Hermitage: It is an amazing place. The quality of art is extra-ordinarily high; there are so many of the works of art that you have seen reproduced in art books. The building itself is gorgeous, including the two sections which are historically the museum rather than the Winter Palace which you would have expected to be opulent. And the viewing conditions are phenomenal! At the Hermitage, the combination of natural light and artificial light and the spacing of the art makes for excellent viewing and enjoyment. If you have to choose between a single trip to one palace outside St. Petersburg, you'll have a hard choice. Catherine's Palace includes the recently restored amber room and that room alone is on the UNESCO list as one of the cultural wonders of the world. The tour of Catherine's Palace focuses more on the state rooms while the tour of Peter's Palace focuses equally on the state and private rooms. If I were forced to choose one destination, the grounds of Peter's Palace with the amazing fountains would tip the balance towards Peterhof. If you are going to Catherine's Palace with a personal guide, consider stopping at the WW II war memorial. The one I have in mind is en route to Tsarkoye Selo (The Tsar's Village) where Catherine's Palace is located. Although there are sculptures at ground level, the majority of the memorial is sub-terranean. This memorial honors the role of the women and children of St. Petersburg in defying Hitler's siege of their city. There is another memorial with mounds of earth to represent the 900 days of the siege endured by the St. Petersburg population that is also supposed to be very moving, but I don't know it's location with respect to other destinations. If you are offered an excursion to attend the ballet in St. Petersburg, find out more about the company you'll be seeing before plunking down your money. A ballet performance was a standard part of our tour. Had we paid extra, I would have been somewhat disappointed. We wrongly had assumed that we would be seeing the Kirov Ballet dance in its home theater, Mariinsky. Nope. There are many ballet companies of varying talent that get created for the sole purpose of entertaining tourists who visit in the summer. We saw "Russian Ballet" (Yup! That's the name of the company!) dance SWAN LAKE at the Alexandrevsky Theater. The theater was as gilded and spectacular as you would hope, but the quality of the ballet was surprisingly weak. If you have some choice about which ballet to attend, I would recommend the company which performs in the theater at the Hermitage. At least that summer company includes some of the stars from the Kirov ballet. Special ballet note: Seeing a Russian company do SWAN LAKE is fascinating because of the ending. During the Soviet era, the original ending with the death of the swan queen and the suicide of the prince was deemed too depressing so a happy ending was created. We've now seen both the Bolshoi and the Kirov dance SWAN LAKE, retaining the Soviet-era ending even though so much of Soviet days is disappearing. The hammer and sickle emblem has all but vanished, but images of Lenin are still found. I "need" to mention the Red October chocolates. I don't know whether our group consisted of candy eaters before arriving in Russia, but they inhaled bars and bars of Red October chocolate on the trip. We liked the dark chocolate version identified by the black wrapper. Finally, I would recommend AGAINST using one day of a a brief cruise stay in St. Petersburg to take an excursion to Moscow. St. Petersburg captures the monarchical history of Russian while Moscow captures the medieval and Soviet history of Russian so there is a distinct difference in the two places. However, there is more than enough glorious stuff to see in St. Petersburg that I wouldn't waste time commuting to Moscow. I would be happy to answer questions. I'll write up more impressions of St. Petersburg if I can make time. Karen Selwyn |
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D Ball wrote:
Wow! It's trite, but it's all I can say. What an informative and delightful report. Thanks for taking the time to go back, prepare this and share it. You're welcome. We just booked our trip, which includes a Baltic cruise, so I will join others looking forward to your St. Petersburg installment. No pressure, but I selfishly hope "eventually" means before July, LOL! I can share what follows immmediately. It's not complete, but it will "nourish" you until I can write up more, and it does contain useful information for cruisers. I wrote some of this in response to others asking about St. Petersburg previously: If you can find a tour that includes admission to the Hermitage earlier than the general public's opening time, choose that NO MATTER WHAT THE COST. We spent seven hours in the museum -- essentially one full day out of our three days in St. Petersburg -- and considered it a day well spent. Our tour group had a head start with a 9:30 a.m. admission to the museum, and our comfort level was much higher the first three or four hours of the visit because the crowds were much smaller. Our guided tour began with the Dutch masters and continued chronologically up to the Impressionist collection. If we had any wait to view a picture, it was so fleeting that it doesn't register a year later. We even felt the benefit of our head start for an additional hour or two. When we began viewing the post-Impressionist and modern art, were already deeper into the museum, and the crowds weren't bad. Since my husband has a vision problem, he didn't get a good enough look at some of the pictures on our guided tour, so we looped back for a second look. By now, we were in the crush of the crowds, and we had to wait for tour groups to step away from paintings to get a good view. During this time, we encountered groups from Oceania, Celebrity, and HAL in the Hermitage; I don't believe I saw any of these groups during our early admission period. I can only repeat what I've already said about The Hermitage: It is an amazing place. The quality of art is extra-ordinarily high; there are so many of the works of art that you have seen reproduced in art books. The building itself is gorgeous, including the two sections which are historically the museum rather than the Winter Palace which you would have expected to be opulent. And the viewing conditions are phenomenal! At the Hermitage, the combination of natural light and artificial light and the spacing of the art makes for excellent viewing and enjoyment. If you have to choose between a single trip to one palace outside St. Petersburg, you'll have a hard choice. Catherine's Palace includes the recently restored amber room and that room alone is on the UNESCO list as one of the cultural wonders of the world. The tour of Catherine's Palace focuses more on the state rooms while the tour of Peter's Palace focuses equally on the state and private rooms. If I were forced to choose one destination, the grounds of Peter's Palace with the amazing fountains would tip the balance towards Peterhof. If you are going to Catherine's Palace with a personal guide, consider stopping at the WW II war memorial. The one I have in mind is en route to Tsarkoye Selo (The Tsar's Village) where Catherine's Palace is located. Although there are sculptures at ground level, the majority of the memorial is sub-terranean. This memorial honors the role of the women and children of St. Petersburg in defying Hitler's siege of their city. There is another memorial with mounds of earth to represent the 900 days of the siege endured by the St. Petersburg population that is also supposed to be very moving, but I don't know it's location with respect to other destinations. If you are offered an excursion to attend the ballet in St. Petersburg, find out more about the company you'll be seeing before plunking down your money. A ballet performance was a standard part of our tour. Had we paid extra, I would have been somewhat disappointed. We wrongly had assumed that we would be seeing the Kirov Ballet dance in its home theater, Mariinsky. Nope. There are many ballet companies of varying talent that get created for the sole purpose of entertaining tourists who visit in the summer. We saw "Russian Ballet" (Yup! That's the name of the company!) dance SWAN LAKE at the Alexandrevsky Theater. The theater was as gilded and spectacular as you would hope, but the quality of the ballet was surprisingly weak. If you have some choice about which ballet to attend, I would recommend the company which performs in the theater at the Hermitage. At least that summer company includes some of the stars from the Kirov ballet. Special ballet note: Seeing a Russian company do SWAN LAKE is fascinating because of the ending. During the Soviet era, the original ending with the death of the swan queen and the suicide of the prince was deemed too depressing so a happy ending was created. We've now seen both the Bolshoi and the Kirov dance SWAN LAKE, retaining the Soviet-era ending even though so much of Soviet days is disappearing. The hammer and sickle emblem has all but vanished, but images of Lenin are still found. I "need" to mention the Red October chocolates. I don't know whether our group consisted of candy eaters before arriving in Russia, but they inhaled bars and bars of Red October chocolate on the trip. We liked the dark chocolate version identified by the black wrapper. Finally, I would recommend AGAINST using one day of a a brief cruise stay in St. Petersburg to take an excursion to Moscow. St. Petersburg captures the monarchical history of Russian while Moscow captures the medieval and Soviet history of Russian so there is a distinct difference in the two places. However, there is more than enough glorious stuff to see in St. Petersburg that I wouldn't waste time commuting to Moscow. I would be happy to answer questions. I'll write up more impressions of St. Petersburg if I can make time. Karen Selwyn |
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Karen,
Many thanks for the prompt posting of your very helpful notes, especially for the compare/contrast on the two palaces and the info about choosing a ballet performance. We will have only the one night, unfortunately, and at the moment, I am thinking the folkloric music & dance evening, even if somewhat "cheesey touristy," is something that would have broader appeal among our group vs. the ballet. Diana |
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Karen Selwyn wrote:
I promised to write up a report about our 2004 Russian River Cruise, and, later than promised, here it is. I ended up going into far more detail than I anticipated, but I had fun remembering the trip so I kept adding information. Travelers whose only contact with Russia will be a visit to St. Petersburg as part of Baltic cruise may want to skip reading this installent. It's quite long and it focuses on our independent land trip to Moscow and our river cruise. I will post the second installment focusing St. Petersburg ASAP. I've written a balanced report; I include the good along with not-so-good. You sure did. One of the most interesting reports I've read on rtc. I think it would benefit many to skip one or two Caribbean cruises and cruise to Russia, China, or another very rich cultural area of the world with alternative philosophies to the U.S. Thanks many times over for this report. Ben S. Karen Selwyn Our trip to Russia included 3 1/2 days of independent travel in Moscow and a two-week river cruise from Moscow to St. Petersburg. The river cruise was with a university group on board the M.S. Litvinov, a boat built for navigating the combination of rivers and canals that connect these two cities. We stopped at several small towns along the way that are primarily famous for their monasteries and churches including Uglich, Yaroslavl, and Goritsy. Our favorite stop en route was Kizhi, an island community which was originally home to two great provincial wooden churches. These churches have become the focus for an assembly of residential wooden structures -- houses and barns. Our trip was absolutely fascinating. |
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"Karen Selwyn" wrote in message news:WTZle.4847$%Z2.1172@lakeread08... Our trip was absolutely fascinating. Traditional tourist destinations like castles or art museums are over the top in Russia. For example, we believe the Hermitage beats the Prado, the Metropolitan, and the Louvre for quality along with quantity, as well as the sheer opulence of the galleries. Catherine’s Palace makes Versailles pale in comparison. While the Amber Room is probably the most famous room within Catherine’s palace, room after room has an equivalent level of opulence with a different decorating scheme. In Versailles, the Hall of Mirrors is justifiably famous, but that level of opulence is not sustained throughout the palace. Thanks for the wonderful review. An interesting thought... the sheer opulence of BOTH Versailles and Catherine's Palace vs. the poverty and starvation of the peasantry resulted in an "off with the head" type of retaliation... while the more subdued monarchies in places like Britain still survive today. Something else to consider (from my art history class in college). Catherine had an even larger collection of Rembrandt's and other great pieces in her collection. I think she had the largest collection of Rembrandt's in the world. Stalin later sold many of them to help fund his military. So the collection was even greater prior to Stalin. --Tom |
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Karen, thanks for sharing your cruise report, it is one of the best ones
I have read. I felt like I was there. Becca Karen Selwyn wrote: I promised to write up a report about our 2004 Russian River Cruise, and, later than promised, here it is. I ended up going into far more detail than I anticipated, but I had fun remembering the trip so I kept adding information. Travelers whose only contact with Russia will be a visit to St. Petersburg as part of Baltic cruise may want to skip reading this installent. It's quite long and it focuses on our independent land trip to Moscow and our river cruise. I will post the second installment focusing St. Petersburg ASAP. I've written a balanced report; I include the good along with not-so-good. Karen Selwyn Our trip to Russia included 3 1/2 days of independent travel in Moscow and a two-week river cruise from Moscow to St. Petersburg. The river cruise was with a university group on board the M.S. Litvinov, a boat built for navigating the combination of rivers and canals that connect these two cities. We stopped at several small towns along the way that are primarily famous for their monasteries and churches including Uglich, Yaroslavl, and Goritsy. Our favorite stop en route was Kizhi, an island community which was originally home to two great provincial wooden churches. These churches have become the focus for an assembly of residential wooden structures -- houses and barns. Our trip was absolutely fascinating. Traditional tourist destinations like castles or art museums are over the top in Russia. For example, we believe the Hermitage beats the Prado, the Metropolitan, and the Louvre for quality along with quantity, as well as the sheer opulence of the galleries. Catherine’s Palace makes Versailles pale in comparison. While the Amber Room is probably the most famous room within Catherine’s palace, room after room has an equivalent level of opulence with a different decorating scheme. In Versailles, the Hall of Mirrors is justifiably famous, but that level of opulence is not sustained throughout the palace. However, a word like “enjoy” doesn’t to apply to a trip to Russia. Putting aside the inevitable glitches that occur with any long, complicated, and physically demanding trip, there was an over-riding contemporary issue that colored all our sightseeing. The people of Russia are truly unhappy with democracy, and I worry about what that means for the future. There is more poverty in Russia today than in the Communist era. During our time in Russia, we read many newspaper articles indicating the majority of citizens look longingly back at the time when the state took care of them. There is more crime in today’s Russia, and, again, the people long for a nation where personal safety is guaranteed at the expense of values we cherish in America. Concepts like “choice” and “freedom” are not important compared to stability and predictability. This was a complete contrast to the attitudes we sensed during our time spent in China in 2002. During our independent time in Moscow, we stayed at the Marriott Royal Aurora, a hotel located approximately 2 blocks from the Bolshoi Theater, four blocks from the main commercial street in Moscow, and a fifteen minute walk from Red Square. The location was great, most of the employees spoke English reasonably well, and the room was spacious, modern, and clean. One disquieting note: At our hotel -- as at all tourist hotels and better restaurants -- a group of burly black-suited guards patrol the entrances day and night. I estimate that no place we visited had fewer than four guards at any time, and the hotels had more with guards patrolling the interior, including the lobby and guarding the elevator to the guest rooms. We chose to view these guards as deterrence that nothing would happen rather than first-responders when something would happen. As a result, we were never frightened. Our arrival day, we never can do more than stroll around and this trip was no exception. Our strolling was complicated by the fact that the hotel supplied a map with the names of streets written in transliterated English, or Latin as the Russians would say. However, none of the signage in Moscow was in English, only in Cyrillic. (When we got to St. Petersburg did we see our first dual language street signs, and, then, only the main streets were so marked.) Our only specific destination was Yeliseevsky, the amazingly elegant grocery store on Tverskaya, the main commercial street. One of my travel magazines had included this as one of the ten great markets of the world, and after seeing it I can’t argue. Crystal chandeliers and baroque plaster carvings coupled with every imaginable delicacy make this a destination grocery store! That night, we dined at CDL; the initials stand for the Cyrillic words “House of Writers.” This restaurant occupies an elegant 19th century mansion. The heavy carved wood paneling, tapestries, and a musicians balcony – complete with a string quartet serenading diners – made our visit a special experience. The menu was vast including a sub-menu of Italian specialties from a period when the restaurant had a visiting chef. The menu was written in both Cyrillic and French. I cannot read or speak Russian, but my French is quite good so my husband and I had no trouble arriving at our choices. Ordering was a bit more problematic as our waiter’s English was very, very, very limited. (In fact, I was brought the wrong appetizer because the waiter the word “Russian” appears in two different options and I was brought the other choice.) Since I suspect English-speaking tourists account for a large percentage of the restaurant’s clientele, I was surprised that the maitre d’ whose English was quite good didn’t make himself available at crucial times when English would have been appreciated by both parties. The food was delicious. On the ride back to the hotel, we saw Red Square for the first time. Awesome. The brilliantly illuminated onion domes of St. Basil’s cathedral is a sight I’ll never forget. The next day, we met Ludmilla, the guide who had been hired through the hotel’s concierge service. We drove outside the city to the house where Lenin lived in the last years of his life. In addition, the contents of Lenin’s office in the Kremlin have been transferred to another building on the grounds of the estate, and we visited there, too. Fascinating experience on many levels. Although the house/museum used to be one of the major pilgrimage destinations in the Communist era, few people visit there now. My husband and I were the only two people visiting. As a result, the curator took us behind the ropes, and we were able to handle some things like Lenin’s personal photo album. Equally fascinating because pre-revolution, the house belonged to the wealthiest industrialist in Russia, and the size of the house was eloquent testimony to his wealth. In each room, the furniture was covered with simple striped cotton slipcovers. Ludmilla persuaded the curator to lift a corner of many of the slipcovers in each room. The furniture was mahogany with bronze decoration and the fabric was opulent brocade. Apparently, Lenin had an interesting threshold; he felt completely comfortable occupying room after room after room, but he drew the line at looking at furnishings that were anything but proletariat. That night, we ate at Beloye Solntse Pustyni (White Sun of the Desert), a restaurant serving food from Uzbekistan. Having eaten Turkish food, we found the Uzecki food to be quite familiar and delicious. The big glitch that night was that the connection between Russian banks and the bank issuing our charge card was down. The restaurant would not accept our charge card. We had enough cash to cover the cost of the meal and the taxi back to the hotel. However, we had cash flow problems for two more days since the US was celebrating the Fourth of July holiday and we had reached our limit from the cash machine until a new business day. We began to use some of our US money even though the exchange rate was pretty bad. We just chalked this up to the mixed joys of travel. (I’m sure that people who travel almost exclusively by cruise ship, are congratulating themselves on the wisdom of their choice after reading some of our struggles after only two days in Russia. We’re willing to accept a certain degree of effort when we travel for benefits we perceive.) The third day, we took a tour of the Moscow subways. If you’ve ridden the subways in NY, Boston, or even Washington DC you have a wholly inadequate vision of the Moscow subways. At least among the older stations, think chandeliers – a different design for each station. Think stained glass. Think bronze reliefs. Think decorative ceramic tiles. Think frescoes. After riding for about an hour, we headed to the Kremlin, via the beautiful Alexander Gardens, to visit the Diamond Fund. This is not the display of crown jewels and state treasures. Those items are on display at the Armory, and that would be a destination with our group tour. The Diamond Fund is a display of Russian diamonds, both loose stones of all carat weights and jewelry. One amazing necklace was made up of modular components. Fully assembled, the diamonds covered most of the wearer’s chest in an ornate and dazzling display. This same necklace – there was a copy made to demonstrate the process – could be disassembled to produce a discreet pendant that an ordinary person could wear with jeans to head to the grocery store. I recognized bracelets, pins, earrings, necklaces, and tiaras, but I couldn’t identify something that looked like 2" wide strips of diamond lace. Ludmilla, told me to look at the minute hooks along the edges of the strips. It really was diamond lace. The hooks were used to sew the diamond lace to clothes. If we ever needed a reminder about the disparity between the pre-revolutionary aristocrats and the serfs, the Diamond Fund was ample evidence. We wondered if the state jewels could top this display. In a word, “yes.” In the afternoon, we took a backstage tour of the Bolshoi Theater. The season had ended the week before. Normally, these backstage tours are offered only during the performance season, but somehow, Ludmilla had persuaded the Bolshoi powers-that-be to run a tour. She is one of few Russian guides who is certified to bring guests into the Bolshoi, and, even then, she is not permitted to give the tour. She simply translates the Bolshoi employee’s talk. (In fact, this two-person approach is typical of many Russian tourist sites. Although the English-speaking guide is licensed and qualified to explain specific destinations, Russian guides provide the commentary at each destination with the personal guides doing the translating.) While we visited the main stage of the Bolshoi, I whipped through a couple of ballet steps, and I can say in all honesty that I have performed ballet on the stage of the Bolshoi! Since the building is quite old, there are lots of places that are a bit risky to access and the number of people in a tour group is quite limited. I doubt a mainstream cruise line would be able to offer a Bolshoi tour as an excursion. In addition, last summer the Bolshoi closed for renovation, a process that is expected to take years. Our last half-day of independent travel, we went to Old Arbat, the pedestrian shopping street and to GUM near Red Square. We bought a Palekh laquer box and an amber bracelet at a state-sponsored store which gave us confidence that both items are legit. (Amber is amazingly easy to fake, or, more likely, to heat to meld small chunks of amber together to produce large, pricier pieces of amber.) We were able to use our charge card at the state-sponsored store, although this was not always the case in all stores on this street. For those old enough to remember the Cold War-era descriptions of shoddy merchandise and empty shelves at GUM, the present version is a revelation. Name every designer label, and you will find it somewhere in Moscow, most often at GUM. (In St. Petersburg, we bought an amber necklace in the main gift shop of the Hermitage. As for the bracelet we bought in Svir'stroy, a tiny town on our cruise... Suffice it to say that we are calling that amber "theoretical amber." Still, I love the design of the bracelet, and I get compliments when I wear the bracelet. The amber jewelry at the gift shop of Catherine’s Palace had the most sophisticated designs, along with the most expensive possibilities. We were with our group and did not have the time needed to make an intelligent choice at any price.) Then, we drove to the northern river port where we boarded the M.S. Litvinov and met our tour group. If you’ve sailed the Yangtze River, you would recognize the our ship. The Litvinov is one of hundreds of seemingly identical river ships working the river and canal route between Moscow and St. Petersburg. At any port, the ships are tied up alongside of one another, sometimes stacked four deep. Passengers on the outside ships walk through the other ships to get to the pier. The Litvinov provides a spartan, but serviceable, cruise experience. The ship has familiar cruise elements: bars on many decks, a theater, a gift shop, a spa whose only service was massages, a beauty parlor, and a medical office. Breakfasts were buffet-style, but lunches and dinners were served by the wait staff. Dinner times were fixed. The food is acceptable. At each meal, one dish rose to the really wonderful level, and I don’t recall anything truly awful. However, eating is not the raison d’etre to be on a river cruise in Russia. There is some effort to accommodate genuine health issues with food, but, at sign-up time, it was made very, very clear that mere preference was not enough to request foods other than the daily choices. Lunch consisted of a salad, a choice of entree, and a dessert. Dinner consisted of a choice of appetizer, a soup or salad, a choice of entree, and a dessert. The worst part of our river cruise was the fact that the ship was our hotel while in port in Moscow for three days and in St. Petersburg for two days. The location of these two ports necessitated an hour-long drive through painfully congested traffic to get to the sites. After the first day of getting more and more frustrated with the appalling traffic and waste of time, some people found large and small ways to cope. For example, lunch was offered on board ship all but one day in Moscow. That meant adding an extra drive back to the ship and, again, into the city for the afternoon tours. Many of us stayed in town on our own, paid for lunch in restaurants, and met the group at the afternoon destination. Others used the subway to go to and from the ship at mid-day, to take advantage of the already-paid-for lunch. One afternoon the tour group ate lunch in Moscow at the Café Pushkin. The traffic between the Tchaikovsky Conservatory and the restaurant turned a fifteen minute ride into an ordeal with no end in sight. Everyone in our bus simply got out and walked. My husband and I would much rather have stayed in a hotel in Moscow – obviously, we would have stayed in the same hotel during our independent travel portion – and transferred to the ship only when we set sail. The convenience of unpacking only once was outweighed by big city travel frustrations. (The following anecdote should help readers calibrate their tolerance for independent travel. One day in Moscow, my husband and I managed to shoehorn a visit to the Impressionist collection to the Pushkin museum during the time period when the group was officially eating lunch back on the boat. We prepared by having our guide write out the name of the Pushkin Museum in Cyrillic on a pamphlet for the All-Russian Museum of Decorative and Folk Arts, our post-lunch destination. When the group got on the bus after our morning tour of Red Square, we broke away, and walked up the main commercial street until we found a clean- and appealing-looking casual restaurant. After eating, we walked to a taxi rank. Using the European number system for the hours of the day and a schematic to suggest we wanted to go one place and, then, another at specific times, we negotiated a taxi fare. We weren’t entirely sure we had been understood, but our desire to go to the Pushkin was sufficiently great that we were willing to take the chance. Everything worked beautifully. The taxi was waiting for us outside the Pushkin at the appointed time and we met the group as planned. We also felt the collection of Impressionist art at the Pushkin was worth the effort and expense.) Comments about some of the tourist attractions in Moscow: Kremlin: There are a limited number of entry points with metal detectors into the Kremlin. Russian policy allows Russian citizens to cut in line ahead of tourists. This made for a very irritating situation since the day we visited the Kremlin, only one entry point was operating. We were on line over an hour. While waiting we fumed that nothing was worth this wait, but seeing the collection of state jewels, carriages, and clothing in the Armory proved us wrong. We’ve been to Versailles and Windsor, and their collections seem positively low-budget compared to the contents of Armory. In particular, we were overwhelmed by the carriages some of which had inlaid patterns of diamond and pearls. One of the rulers -- possibly Czarina Elizabeth –- wore a different dress every day of her life. When she died, there were only 3 rubles in the nation’s treasury. We did not go into Lenin’s tomb. We did stop at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier which honors not only an unidentified soldier, but also the defenders of six “heroic cities” who fought the Nazis. We went to only one of the churches within the Kremlin proper because of the lines to enter each church. These churches are in addition to St. Basil’s Cathedral, the familiar onion-domed church located in Red Square outside the walls of the Kremlin. The Kremlin church's wall of icons was amazingly ornate as befitted a church patronized by the czars. We were intrigued by the fact that these churches still remained since so many churches were torn down during the Communist era. We were told that the Communist leaders loved having the opulent left-over places from the centuries of the czars as their private playgrounds, and that they loved to visit the Armory, in particular. Moscow Circus: A pleasant enough way to spend an evening. With Cirque du Soleil shows performing all over the world, the Moscow Circus is no longer the unique attraction it once was. Certainly, the production values of a Cirque du Soleil performance outshine those of the Moscow Circus. Happily, the quality of each act was excellent. While in Moscow, we also toured the Novodevichy and Donskoy Monasteries, along with the Novodevichy cemetery. This is the Russian equivalent of Pere Lachaise cemetery. The biggest tourist draws are Krushchev’s and Raisa Gorbachev’s graves. We were fascinated by the markers of graves from the non-religious Communist era. We visited the Tchaikovsky Conservatory where we heard a wonderful piano recital, and the Tretyakov Gallery, a museum of Russian art ranging from 11th century icons to Social Realism and contemporary art. Our tour focused on the Russian Symbolist art which is a collection of importance in art histoyr but is virtually unknown outside of Russian. Interesting. However, I would have preferred spending time seeing the contemporary art; I like Chagall, Malevich, and Kandinsky, and the Tretyakov has major collections of all these artists. Comments about our ports during the river cruise: We stopped at Uglich, Yaroslavl, Goritsky, Svirstroy, and Kizhi Island. Each of the stops was enjoyable, but visitors should be prepared for a certain amount of repetition. Of course the Transfiguration Monastery in Yaroslavl is different from the Kirillow-Belozersk Monastery in Goritsky, but by the fourth stop at a provincial monastery the experience became somewhat predictable. This reaction may be an issue of prior knowledge. When my husband and make our annual visits to Italy, we understand that there is a lot of repetition among the hill towns of Tuscany, for example, or among Romanesque churches. However, we know enough about Italian art and architecture that minor variations are a source of interest and pleasure to us. Our knowledge of Russian iconography is minuscule so we were not at the stage where minor variations were always apparent or fascinating. The commentary of the guides became paramount to make our experiences enjoyable. The notable exception to this was in Kizhi where we could see the difference between the naturalistic way the religious figures were depicted and the stylized depictions at most of the other churches. The most enjoyable element of these small towns was the brief concert we heard in each church. The acoustics were routinely phenomenal which made the concert of folk or religious music absolutely goose-bump producing. Part II featuring St. Petersburg to follow – eventually. |
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Karen,
I thoroughly enjoyed this trip report. Thanks for both parts 1 & 2. What fantastic reading. Steve |
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Becca wrote:
Karen, thanks for sharing your cruise report, it is one of the best ones I have read. I felt like I was there. If I can't be traveling, I love thinking about, reading about, or writing about traveling. Writing up my trip allowed me to do something I love. I'm delighted people enjoyed my efforts. Karen Selwyn |
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