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Thu, June 24: We were taken to the air port at four p.m. in Sacramento. Getting through controls on Delta for the day’s flights and security was easy, and we got a paper from another passenger to kill time in the usual slow hours. The flight to Salt Lake City was easy. We were fed onto the New York City flight but from there things went wrong. Once the doors were closed, we were told that it would be more than an hour and perhaps as many as two hours before we could leave due to delays at the other end. One excuse was work on a runway at JFK, while later the reason was switched to thunderstorms over central Pennsylvania that slowed flights. We were moved inside after half an hour, and then brought back onto the plane an hour later. The flight across the country had no problems that gave us any insight about why the long delay had occurred.

We had to wait an unusually long time to get our luggage before any bags on our flight finally arrived. We had to learn how to take an "Airtrain" elevated trail to a pick-up area at Federal Circle and from there to get to our nearby hotel. The multiple delays cost us about three hours, longer than usual. We ate in the hotel and quit early.

Fri, June 25: We slept late due to having gotten up at four a.m. yesterday, rising about nine Eastern Daylight Zone. We took it easy and didn’t leave the room until about eleven. Our goal was going to Governor’s Island, where Sandy had lived for about two years when nine and ten. The island had opened at the start of June, now a part of New York State’s Park system for half and under the National Park Service for the Fort Jay section of the island.

We thought the subway system would be easy, but it wasn’t. We checked out of the hotel and left our luggage stored with them, and then took a shuttle to Federal Circle. There we were to take the Airtrain to the area of Jamaica Circle to get on a subway that would take us near to the South Street ferry building. Unfortunately, Federal Circle’s Airtrain had two paths away from the JFK Airport, and we took the wrong one to a different destination. We stayed on the train and went back to Federal Circle, along with at least five others who had been equally unable to figure out the limited information about where the Airtrain was going. We found there was a staff person at the trains simply to tell people what to do and how to avoid the path that so many people took in error.

We finally got to the correct target (just before Jamaica Circle) and took a subway downtown, a trip that took about forty-five minutes. We had to pay $5 each for the short and misguided Air-train trip, but got cheap subway fare, only $2.50 each for round trips as we were seniors. At Broad, we got off and slowly strolled south to the Battery Ferry Building. On the way, we stopped for lunch as we had not eaten anything yet this day. The Italian restaurant, Ancora Ristorante, was excellent, with Nelson’s Lobster Bisque and Rockefeller Oysters as good as could be, while Sandy raved about her risotto. We then walked the last couple of blocks to the ferry building and went to the ticket booths. There we were told it was now 3:07 p.m., and the last ferry had left at 3:00 p.m.

So much planning, but such a sad outcome. Sandy was much more phlegmatic. We had no options. We walked back up Broad, went into the subway, found we had to go another block to another entrance to get the right tickets for our Senior Ticket options and took the repeat subway trip back to the hotel. We got our bags, took another trip to the airport, checked in and killed time waiting for the nine-twenty flight, and then had to wait until ten due to delays. We found that we were seated across an aisle in the 3-4-3 struc-ture on the 747 plane, and could do nothing about it.

Sat, June 26: We got a little sleep during the trip, Nelson with almost three hours and Sandy less, as is usual for both of us. We got to Frankfurt about eleven a.m., or six a.m. New York time and three a.m. California time. We had to wait about two hours, during which we had little to do and so we just sat and read. The plane to St. Petersburg was smaller. We landed about seven p.m., including two more hours of zone time changes. Going through Russian immigration was awful - very slow with hostile bureaucrats trying to keep it even slower and succeeding. That took close to a half hour and then we had another half hour waiting for other passengers to get through until our group of six people was gathered by Vantage people to take us by van to the ship.

We were sent into dinner right after dropping off our bags, food which we didn’t really need after several small meals on airplane connections, but we got a free glass of wine. We met a nice couple from Tampa, Florida, an Obstetrics doctor and his charming wife. We finished dinner about ten.

Back in our room, we were delighted to find how large our room was. We had rooms last fall on the Rhine/Danube river trip of about 160 square feet and had anticipated 116 square feet on this trip, as Russian rooms are always smaller. We had paid extra when we signed up for the trip last fall and we got one of the two premium Deluxe Suites, a room 192 square feet including a sofa, chair, large table and double bed rather than two twins. We also found we had television, which had been denied in the material sent to us in preparation for the trip. (Later, we saw that there is at least occasionally Internet access on the ship as well.) Most astonishingly, we had a refrigerator including a freezer in which we could prepare ice cubes.

Sandy went to sleep while Nelson stayed up until eleven. The sky remained somewhat light through all the night. We later learned that this was the “white nights”, bright enough to read outside in St. Petersburg without lights for two weeks on either side of the Summer Solstice.

Sun, June 27: We got up at 6:30 a.m. when our alarm went off. Nelson took a shower in the tiny bathroom, reminiscent to the tiny bathroom combination of shower, sink and toilet in our 19’ van in Europe in 2005. The breakfast room was small and very crowded. However, it was the only place where we actually interacted with members of the other two groups on the ship. We heard that about half the tour people were on a Norwegian trip and a third were from Turkey, although we have heard almost nothing otherwise about them. (The Turks were apparently eating in a different dining room while we ate in a room -- sitting separately -- with the Norwegians.) Vantage had only 21 people on their trip, plus a program manager. It was actually beneficial for us, as all our travels were separate from the other groups and so we had a mostly empty bus to hold our small group. We also did our trips, lunches and dinners only with each other, so learned little about the other tourists.

We left the boat in a bus for downtown about eight, taking a forty-five minute drive to down-town St. Petersburg. Our guide, Marina Fokina, escorted us to our bus and introduced a local guide for St. Petersburg's exploration. We drove around town for a couple of hours, getting lectures about many beautiful or historically interesting buildings. Our local guide was a woman with great knowledge of post-university skill and familiarity. Her lectures were superb.

We heard about the building of St. Petersburg in May, 1707, by Peter the Great who built the fortress of Kronslot, later Kronstadt, to protect the country's access to the Gulf of Finland as well at Sts Peter and Paul's Cathedral, and soon moved the national capital there from Moscow. While the capital was moved back to Moscow in 1727, it was returned in 1730. The city quickly rose to 150,000 and then under Catherine the Great rose to 220,000.

By World War I, population was 1,500,000 people. The city had become the nation's science and cultural center plus the major shipbuilding center. During World War II, the Germans besieged the city, unsuccessfully, for nine hundred days. Almost a million people died, mostly from starvation. Massive damage impacted the city but everything was restored after the war. Beautiful buildings like the Summer Palace were occupied and badly hurt by the Germans but now appear to be as they always had been.

We stopped to permit photos on particularly appealing buildings, including the Smolny Cathedral, the remarkable Church-on-the-Spilled-Blood also called Resurrection Church (site of Alexander II's assassination in 1881) and to (but not in) the enormous St. Issac’s Cathedral and the adjacent Nicolaus I statue. We had not taken jackets, a mistake. The temperature got to about 65, but cutting wind sometimes penetrating us with chill.

Travelling around town was not limited by Sunday traffic, but sporting events were being held on streets all around the rivers that cut through town, mostly appearing to be long-distance runs. Getting to Peter and Paul Fortress took more than an hour to cross the main Neva River as ten of the eleven bridges were closed to vehicles. The driver went from bridge to bridge, only to be turned away by police and usually being forced to make a U-turn. Finally a cell phone resulted in information by other drivers who reported a bridge that was still open. We didn’t go through all of Peter and Paul’s Fortress, dipping only into the Peter and Paul’s Church to see the burials of all but two of the Czar’s who ruled since about 1710. We saw the burials of Nicolaus II and his family, finally recovered since their execution in 1916 at Ekaterinburg. Anastasia’s body had been found and her identify proved a few years ago and recently moved to the church for burial as well, along with her missing brother. (The use of DNA proved the certainty that she had been executed in the Revolution and the false tale of the woman who said she was Anastasia.)

Getting to the buffet lunch restaurant was also difficult, and we had to walk half a dozen blocks in a bitter wind to get there. Even so, the food was nice, with Nelson fond of the meatballs blended with rice and Sandy loving the borscht. We sat with some people who told us with fervor and ignorance that Mexico was now advised as unsafe for all Americans, and that Mexico had recently adopted a retaliatory requirement of visas and $26,000 in saving accounts for any American who wanted to visit Mexico. (Her source was reportedly from “NBC or CNN or some-thing like that” who reported a statement from an Iowa congressman. We didn’t believe either assertion.)

The vehicle trip to Hermitage (the Winter Palace plus half a dozen other royal facilities incorporated into the museum) was also slow, and when our group got there we had lost two of the planned four hours of tour of the magnificent museum. We had visited the museum during our cruise that included St. Petersburg in 2003, and had been disappointed when we (apparently due to short-age of time) were hustled through the Impressionist section, the most wonderful collection in the world. This time, we lost all the visit to the Impressionists due to today's delays. We were very well guided about high quality paintings or art items by our guide, who was simply awesome in her knowledge and ability to communicate. We saw two of the world’s ten known paintings by Leonardo de Vinci, and twenty-five Rembrandt paintings, far more than the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. However, we ran out of our two hours when we reached 1812 as our path forced us to go through paintings on a chronological route and that was simply the end of the day. As the Impressionists didn’t paint until late in the 19th century, we did not get to see any of them.

After a few minutes waiting in the bitter wind, we got onto our bus and headed back to the ship. We got there a bit before five and had dinner at five-thirty. We skipped the group’s trip to the Swan Lake ballet, as the bus left at 6:45 for the 8:00 to 10:00 show and would get back about 11:30 p.m. Instead, we both went to sleep about eight. Sandy got up at midnight and read for a couple of hours, while Nelson got up about two and worked on the computer for a couple of hours. The rest of the time we slept, and as a result both had about eight hours of sleep to help us catch up with our opposite-world body-clock systems.

Mon, June 28: We woke to the alarm at 6:30 and got up. We had decided to skip the day’s trip to the Summer Palace and Petershof. We had been to the Summer Palace, finding it worth less than its reputation, and knew we didn’t want to spend eight hours on the road to see the gardens at Petershof. We also passed on an hour’s drive to downtown to be followed by two hours of walking around before returning for an hour’s drive to the ship, as we had no known targets to see.

At ten, we toured the ship while our room was cleaned. We found two bars at the rear end of the ship, including one that was open all day from eight a.m. We kept that information as a backup if we wound up without an adequate supply in our room. Sandy dozed on the sofa after we returned while Nelson wrote e-mails for our kids and a similar one to Fred as well.

We ate lunch with three Texas women companions all teachers, who were chatty and interesting. That had arrived in St. Petersburg several days ahead of the tour’s start and had already visited most of the sites the group were to see on today's tour as well.

That evening we had a glass of champagne with the captain, who welcomed us on his boat. He spoke only Russian, but with educated quality. We had dinner with our enjoyable companions from Tampa, the Greek doctor who had gone to medical school in Zagreb. Another couple joined us at our suggestion. From now on until we reached Moscow, we would be required to sit with the same people, so we had chosen them with care. They all made it more interesting for us. Our ship left St. Petersburg heading up the short distance of the Neva River and then into the Ladoga Lake for the night's cruising.

Tue, June 29: We got up about five a.m. or a little later. Both of us were still not easy with our patterns of waking and sleeping. We watched out the three large windows in our large room, as our room was wide rather than narrow and deep, as we crossed over the enormous Lake Ladoga.

Sandy went to a lecture on the Russian alphabet and came back entertained. She also saw a show about crafts, which was mostly like a sale of goods carried in the ship’s shopping store. Nelson stayed in the cabin through the morning, watching outside and the passing scenery. We made our way across Ladoga and then onto the wide River Svir with occasional passage of working ships going the other way while another river cruise followed us. We went through a lock, the first we’d noticed (although we had earlier been through others at night).

We stopped at an artificial village called Mandroga, burned to the ground by the Germans during the war and recently re-built by a millionaire as an entertainment area. In fact, all it had was lots of shops with Russian tourist goods, mostly the dolls-within-dolls (Mantrusha) that have become so popular. The remaining option was the Museum of Vodka. We returned to the ship within about twenty minutes rather than the permitted ninety minutes.

Our afternoon excitement was trying out a surprise evacuation drill, which most of us failed as trying to tie on the orange flotation vests was quite difficult. After the exercise, with lots of laughter among all of us, we spent the rest of the afternoon in our cabin.

Dinner was much better tonight. After a weak meal last night, most of us were thinking that the highlight of this trip would not be the food. It was good to see that some decent and enjoyable meals were still being made. We had an active, enjoyable conversation during dinner. Our selection of companions was working out well. The light was still bright and warm tonight; this had been one of the best weather days so far even though it hadn’t reached the level of 70.

Wed, June 30: We got up early, about six. We had cruised since before dawn north on Lake Onega. We left the ship at 8:30 a.m. in beautiful weather on the island of Kizhi. A major pagan religious center, it became a similar Russian Orthodox center in the 16th center as the Russians expanded into the Lapp area. The incredible nail-free construction of the Transfiguration Church with 22 domes was built in 1714, and the next-door nine cupola Intercession Church was built in 1764. A bell tower was added between the two in 1874. The island, only five miles by a mile, was in sad shape when it was restored in the 1950s and became a national museum to which wooden buildings were moved there from many other areas of northern Russia. One was the oldest wooden church in Russia, St. Lazarus’ Church, built before 1400.

We walked through a beautiful morning, bright sunshine but temperatures below 70. A good local guide talked with us about each building as we walked through the area. Most interesting for us was the huge Transfiguration, a summer-only building as it was too large to heat in winter. The adjacent Intercession Church was a winter facility, small enough to heat. The nearby large, rich farm family’s home (for 18 people) built in 1876 was a delight, coping with many of the problems of winter and cold.

We walked for an hour and a half and then returned to the cruise ship. In our room, we read or typed for more than an hour before lunch. This was the northern point of our trip, and the boat turned after lunch toward the south again. Strangely, about four or five cruise boats were tra-velling the same path, and all their tourists had been walked around Kizhi at the same time. The local guides were used to moving the groups around each other so they could all be lecturing at the same time without much interference, particularly when each had to go into one building after another.

We went downstairs for another good lunch, with the salad very nice. The ship went south to the River Kovzha and then into Beloye (White) Lake, the connection between the Baltic Rivers and the Caspian Rivers. During the night, we went onto the Sheksna River.

Sandy dozed after lunch and slept most of the time until past six-thirty. Nelson worked on the computer, visited a tour of the bridge by the captain and went to hear a talk on the next couple of day’s shore tours. We had another nice dinner with our companions. All of us were becoming quite comfortable with each other and pleased to be together each day for lunch and dinner. During dinner, we began to pass through six locks that linked the Baltic Sea rivers to the Volga and ultimately to the Caspian Sea and the Mediterranean; the system is cleverly called the Volga-Baltic water-way. Hydroelectronic dams were built into the lock system (or vice versa) in most of the transitions.

Thu, July 1: We went to a talk at ten for more an hour on the history of Russia from about 900 to 1917. Our program manager, Marina, was very good. She is an amateur historian, and showed high skills with total memory of the dates of Russian history. It was unfortunate that she rarely talked about history and never mentioned post-1917 events; a number of us were more interested in history and politics than on churches. We had a very good lunch (both of us had pork and corn fritters). Not long after, the ship anchored at Goritsy.

Our afternoon tour was to the mighty fortress and St. Cyril of Beloye Lake Monastery at Kirillov. Built in the 1380 period, it was the second largest monastery in northern Russia, intended to extend the influence of Moscow and to convert the Lapps. More churches were built when the Czar's crown prince and heir finally received a son after prayers at the monastery. (It took his wife twelve months to give birth to the son after she left Grand Prince Vasily and returned to Moscow; but who counts? Or maybe that delay had something to do with why the boy grew to became Ivan the Terrible.) After a successful defeat of the Poles (allied with one of the Czar’s family on a dispute of the succession) in 1612, a gigantic fortress was built to protect the monastery and the northern borders against the Swedes. The walls are about 35’ high with dense bricks. While taken by the state in the early years of the Soviet Union, the monastery was later re-turned to the Church and now has a few monks once again although it is more a museum. It is moderately beautiful but even more powerful in its appearance.

We had a blintz and vodka tasting in the afternoon, with five shots of different vodkas to taste. All of us were somewhat stunned. Back in our room, Nelson slept for two hours while Sandy read. Until the next day, we cruised through a series of rivers connected ultimately to the Volga River. In the morning, we finished going through the Rybinsk Reservoir and onto the Volga River itself.

Dinner was funny, with a pirate theme encouraged and a bit more vodka offered. We were all a little affected by the earlier drinking, and our conversations were a little confusing. The staff played games in their pirate outfits, making fun for everybody.

Fri, July 2: We were given a late breakfast and then an almost empty morning, except for a meeting at 10:30 to learn what would be involved with organized and optional trips in Moscow. We decided that we would not sign for any of the Moscow options, as all were only in evenings and would turn days in fourteen or more hours. (Tourists would come home at 12:30 p.m., far beyond our normal ability to stay alert.)

We had a late lunch, and then got onto a bus to tour Yaroslavl. It is a city of more than 600,000 people, in great shape so far as jobs and economy and filled with 17th century history. Probably established by Vikings for trading on the Volga to the south with the Kazan tribe of Moslems, it was named after Yaroslavl the Wise in 1071 so that it officially viewed as a Russian source by the Russians, who preferred to ignore the early ruling years of the Vikings. It was an independent principality from 1218, was conquered by the Tartars in 1238 that also killed all the nobility of the region and then was taken back under Russian rule by Moscow in 1463. Even the English, the Dutch and the Germans established late medieval warehouses in the city for trading. When the Poles dominated Moscow in the Time of Troubles, volunteers helped to defeat the invaders; as a result, Yaroslavl was awarded with the right for tax-free transportation of stone and timber, making it rich.

We went to see many of the churches in the city, but fortunately not all - there are more than 75 churches. We went into the main square of the city ("Soviet Square" was said by our local guide, but officially it was Central Square now) to see the Church of Elijah the Prophet. Built in the 17th century, as was the case with most of the large churches, it was still intact with its rich icons and frescos covering the walls. We walked through the area of the Transfiguration Cathedral and looked at a gorgeous orange/red domed church as well. Our last church view had utterly beautiful gold-covered domes. We also stopped at a woman’s life exhibition of her paintings, although they were closer to nice than important. The lacquer boxes there were striking and wonderful to see, although it was mainly a shopping trip.

In between each visit to a church, we had half an hour for shopping, a total of three such opportunities. We stopped for a drink once as we had 45 minutes to kill, and simply waited out the other times. Of course, some of the women on the tour always love to shop, and so they viewed the shopping opportunities as the day’s major events.

We took a short river cruise to Kostroma, a bit farther down the Volga. We made a short visit to see another remarkably lovely church, the Holy Trinity Cathedral in the Ipatiev Monastery. Prince Mikhail Romanov hid there while Boris Godunov ruled the country (regent from 1584, Czar 1598-1605) after taking control upon the death of Ivan the Terrible. (Ivan's possible heir, a morganatic boy, died at ten of a cut throat, officially classified as an epileptic seizure; in Kostroma, everybody assumes that Godunov had the boy assassinated.) When Godunov died of a stroke, Mikhail was chosen to be Czar, the first of the Romanovs.

We spent forty-five minutes in the evening to meet with three young university women who were studying in foreign languages, all in French and English. It must have been an apprehensive situation for them, but they all tried hard and seemed to like the experience. Dinner was at eight, late again. Even so, we had another pleasant interchange of conversation.

Sat, July 3: We didn’t have breakfast on the ship this morning. Instead, we left at nine in Uglich on the west side of the Volga and went to two local families which provides us with breakfast. We were divided into two groups of 12 and 11 so that they could handle us. We had done the same twice earlier in Croatia, so we were familiar with it and comfortable. It poured with rain as we headed out of the ship. Fortunately, both of us routinly carry umbrellas and light rain jackets whenever we travel, so we were prepared. We were taken in a van to a woman’s home. Only nine of us went, as some had stayed on the ship rather than face the rain.

The large yard of the woman (a mid-fifties engineer, living alone) was remarkable, with hundreds of square feet with vegetables and fruits of many different kinds. It must take hours of work every day to maintain such a large garden, particularly to fight weeds back. She was a very warm and friendly person of great delight. She spoke almost no English, but Trifon, our Tampa friend, did a fairly good role of translation to help the group. We had delightful porridge, cheese and then blinis, with everybody enjoying the breakfast. She finished the meal with a shot of vodka for each of us. Some of us were getting more accustomed to taking it down in one slug while others were still trying to sip it.

When we left the house the rain had declined to a faint drizzle. Our van took us to the ancient heart of the city, where we walked around to see another set of lovely churches. Uglich had been important in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and was captured in 1611 by the Poles, who killed about 40,000 inhabitants. The son of Ivan the Terrible became the Czar but died in Uglich at age ten; the locals in Uglich all believed he was assassinated. We enjoyed the green domes of the Transfiguration Cathedral and the lovely blue domes of the Church of Prince Dimitry the Martyr (known better as Church-on-the-Blood). We walked back to the ship through a good collection of shopping tents with better-than-usual goods.

Trifon and Nelson went to see another excellent soccer game, Germany versus Argentina, at six in the bar along with Trifon’s wife Marcia. Everybody else left at seven for dinner, but Nelson and Trifon stayed to watch the German's astonishing 4-0 win over Argentina. Nelson and Trifon returned to the restaurant and ate a bit while joining the others.
Sandy and Nelson picked up a couple of photos from the photographer that had been taken on earlier days at Kizhi, very good quality photos for us to add to the Log.

Sun, July 4: This was the Fourth of July. Sandy went to the advice meeting on returning home, and then to a doll painting meeting. The big news for us was that our flight would leave the New Moscow Airport at 5:30 a.m. on Tuesday, and we would have to be on a bus leaving the boat at 2:30 a.m. That meant we had to get up no later than 1:30 a.m. on July 6.

We had lunch at 11:30 a.m. and got ready to leave by van for touring Moscow at 1:15 p.m. The traffic was unusually mild, according to what we were told. It was a warm day into the eighties, and all the beaches along the rivers we had traveled for the day were filled with people out in skimpy European swim suits. When we got downtown, lots of well-dressed young women were touring the city, usually in tight, slim outfits due to the warm weather.

We saw another collection of churches, but also saw many interesting governmental buildings. The Stalinist style was usually large and classic; the later Khrushchev style was colorless and dull. The city was filled with very large, monumental buildings that were more interesting than we had expected. Our tour guide was a very sharp, entertaining and humoristic talker whom we really enjoyed. He discounted any further interest in Communism in Russia, saying that only 8% voted for its return during the last election.

We toured a large convent building, seen first from a distance and then walking through it. Then we went to Red Square, a magnificent and huge area. St. Basil’s Church was as lovely as its photos indicated. The Kremlin was not beautiful but it was powerful. The modern-style Lenin tomb was interesting, but hard to see clearly against the much larger Kremlin behind it. It was no longer open to the public.

We then walked through the GUM shopping center across the square from the Kremlin, noting that it was filled with modern European styles at high prices. When we were done walking, we stopped inside GUM to pause for a drink of wine or beer. When we got back to the ship, we were late for dinner, as the announcements about changes hadn’t been registered with us. The others at our table were going to the 9:30 p.m. - 12:30 a.m. “Moscow at Night” tour. We skipped it.

Mon, July 5: We got up a bit earlier than usual as the bus was going to leave at 8:30. We went downtown again, but this time didn’t stop at a variety of tour sites. We first disembarked to get onto the Moscow subway. The 20 of us (three chose not to participate) went down the long stairs to the remarkably deep subway trains, begun in the ‘30s and expanded thereafter. We all rushed “like bullets” under command of our guide to get onto each train when it came in, and had no problems with courtesy and helpfulness from Muscovites. We got to see two stations, and understood how well they are built and designed as art as well, even if the Soviet style was about the Soviet political approach.

We were emerged just outside the Kremlin, and were able to get in shortly after. It was a very impressive museum. We spent more than an hour walking through the open spaces surrounding by half a dozen great and beautiful cathedrals and churches. Czars were baptized there, married there, coroneted there and buried there until St. Petersburg took over the last role. The views of the great churches were awesome, including a tour inside one of them.

Then we went into the Kremlin Museum. It was particularly rich in monarchic goods. The Faberge eggs were the world’s largest collection. Coronation gowns were amazing, including the slimiest waist sizes we’d ever seen. The carriages were marvelous and appealing. Even the more mundane armor, as early as the 12th century, was of some interest. The major problem was that we were on our feet for too long, until about one, and often packed closely with other very large tour groups.

We went to an excellent lunch restaurant patio under overhead cover but with the breeze blowing through the open area. Sandy and Nelson had a wine added to the lunch at their own cost with pleasure. (Nelson would have had a beer, but found that only Bud was sold there.) We had a decent lunch with the Texas three women teachers.
Nelson greatly admired our local tour guide named Alexander, bright and knowledgeable with a terrific sense of humor. His English language was remarkable.

After lunch, with all of us tired of many hours of walking, we went to the old Arbat shopping street. It was of little interest, not just for us but for others as well, and it wasn’t much fun in the hot sun of the 80 degree weather. We spent the last half of that in an Italian restaurant to have two glasses of wine at about $20, a remarkably high price.
Back at the ship, we began packing so that we could get up at 1:20 and head out to the airport. We were to have our bags outside by midnight and meet at 2:20 at the exit to get on the bus. It was going to be a very long day.

Tue, July 6: We woke at 1:20 a.m. We had put our larger bags outside our room before we went to sleep. We left our room at 2:20 and got into a van with four others from our Vantage group. They were flying out earlier than we, so we would have a larger amount of time to kill waiting for our plane to board.

We had no problems checking in to Lufthansa and getting seats. We went through modest security with light requirements about taking off things like shoes, although the Russians were still tense about Chechnya guerillas. We went through a body x-ray like that we’d done in San Francisco last year.

We were given a light breakfast in a bag by the cruise ship, so we nibbled a bit. We read from about four or a little after until about six-thirty when we got onto the flight to Frankfurt. We got another light meal on the plane. Getting from our Moscow flight and onto the New York City flight at Frankfurt was a nightmare. There were hundreds of people working their way not just from our flight but from others as well; it looked to us as a plane-full of people from India and another from China. There was almost no control for people going through immigration. Fortunately, Sandy was treated as if we were on a tight connection and we were moved around most of the masses of the people. For unknown reasons, Nelson got a major wand-check where even bare skin like his arm would cause the wand to buzz; the officer was competent but said he couldn’t see any reason why Nelson was sounding the alarm. We finally were able to sit down and spend about an hour and a half waiting for the JFK flight to get loaded.

Once more we got food, given a lunch not long after we flew out of Frankfurt. We were given another light meal when we were getting ready to land. Overall, we had been given four meals for the day, far more than we needed. Nelson tried to sleep en route, but was unsuccessful. Sandy got a little bit of sleep but not much. We landed about one p.m. New York time, the equivalent of eleven p.m. on Moscow time. We were getting tired. We paid for a van to take us to the Westin Times Square hotel, which took about an hour. The New York City temperature was brutal, about 100 and humid. We checked in and were given a lovely room on a corner, with Platinum-quality level thanks to Karen.

We cancelled all our plans to go out this afternoon. Nelson worked on the computer while Sandy simply went to sleep. We didn’t need to go out for dinner - we were stuffed - and we had been up for about 26 hours. Nelson sent e-mails to family reporting our safe arrival and then went to bed as well, at about six-thirty.

Wed, July 7: We both woke around two a.m. and got up after a bit. We had both slept for about eight hours and found it difficult to go back to sleep. We puttered around the room and worked through small things for several hours. We did a lot of talking about possible things to do this day, but kept moving closer to the decision very little. We decided to skip the visit to the Lower East Side Tenements even though we had bought tickets, and skipped the Frick Collection. Instead, we went out in the morning to get for Nelson some medicine to fight against coughing, sore throat and runny nose. He had begun to notice a cold when we were preparing to leave Moscow and it had gotten worse since then.

At noon we walked four long blocks to the Grand Central Terminal to have a fine lunch at the Oyster Bar and Restaurant. The clams and scallops were particularly excellent and Sandy liked her lobster roll while Nelson best enjoyed the scallops. Then we marched back to the Westin (a 25-minute walk through dense heat near 100) and puttered for a while before we quit from the day.

Thu, July 8: We had a long night of close to twelve hours of real sleep. Both of us were much closer to US time zones at last. Nelson was improved from yesterday afternoon, but was still not feeling in good shape. With Sandy urging him to be protective of himself, we decided to skip going out for a tour during the day. It was a wise choice. We were also aided by an unappealing weather outside. While it wasn’t quite as hot today, going up only into the high eighties, the overcast was complete and we saw a brief thunderstorm by looking through the windows of our corner hotel room.
Sandy made reservations for a van pickup for the morning. Nelson went to the Executive Room and printed out a receipt for the van and boarding passes for Delta flight to Sacramento tomorrow.

We went out about one to Heartland Brewery and Restaurant, of which there were two within a couple of blocks from our hotel as well as three others elsewhere in Manhattan. We had a good lunch, with Nelson having fish and chips while Sandy had a sirloin sandwich. However, Sandy began to come down with health problems herself, mostly with fever and aches, and didn’t finish her sandwich. We went back to our room and Sandy napped. She got up a couple of hours later and did most of the packing, which wasn’t difficult because we had unpacked little from the river cruise ship.

Fri, July 9: We woke a little before five. Sandy completed the last of the packing. We went downstairs with our luggage about six-thirty and were picked up a little after seven. It seemed very early for us to leave Manhattan at seven to get onto a plane at 11:25 a.m., but we seemed to be, as in Mo-cow, fixed in a requirement of arriving hours early at the airports. We had a delay because a van had failed and so we were picked up late. Even so, we had almost three hours to wait for takeoff even after getting through check-in and security. Nelson was about the same with health problems but Sandy was getting worst, with fever coming now and then. She took ibuprofen through the day whenever she noticed higher fever.

We had a nice flight to Minneapolis. The clouds were puffy cotton-balls throughout the sky but never clumping together, so we could see the ground between many of the small clouds. Nelson took several photos, trying to get good shots even though he’d never been successful before with those types through poor airplane windows. The airplane was quite small, with only 76 seats. As a result, we had a two x two seating arrangement and the two of us didn’t have to share seats with others. The plane appeared new, with several updated electronic signs and symbols that we hadn’t seen previously.

We had to kill time for another three hours in Minneapolis and so paused at a brew-pub for a leisurely lunch. Sandy didn’t eat much of her blue cheese burger, the same lack of appetite as yesterday. We had the chance to sit in an exit row and took it so that we had more room for our feet and legs between our row and the one in front. We both slept a little on the flight to Sacramento, but probably less than an hour for Nelson and a bit more for Sandy.

Sher picked us up and drove us home, a great benefit for us. We were both weary, as we got home at eleven p.m. Eastern time. Nelson didn’t go to sleep until about 10 p.m. Pacific, 1 a.m. Eastern. Both of us took lots of pills to combat fever, coughing, sore throat and runny nose for whichever were affecting each of us. It was good to be home to recover.

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