Volga Dream cruise

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Geo: 57.5247, 38.3328

We embarked our ship on Sunday afternoon. The Volga Dream carries a maximum of 109 passengers (95 on this trip) on four decks. We have a nice suite on the top deck. It is comfortable and functional but not especially luxurious. The food is good and the staff pleasant and efficient. Wine and beer are included with lunch and dinner, which is fine.

The first night and most of the next day were spent cruising. We had an interesting and passionate talk from Ludmilla, our history professor guest speaker. She disagrees with the majority view that Gorbachev was a bad leader and she also vehemently opposes the nostalgic view that Stalin may not have been so bad. She is not a fan of Putin but recognises that the most important values for the Russian people are stability and protection. Putin provides these and his authoritarian style with reduced personal freedoms is accepted gladly.

We travel quite a distance between stops and the landscape is appealing - green with lots of trees. It is not at all empty. There are many villages with painted onion-dome churches and hilltop kremlins.

I had too jolly a time at the Captains Welcome Dinner and was feeling poorly for most of the morning. This was compounded by discovering that I had left my iPad on the coach in Moscow! I'm managing sharing Robyn's, but I am an unhappy camper. The ship's wi-fi is expensive and very slow, but workable.

We had a little pantomime about Russian Samovar tea drinking and visited the small town of Uglich.

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Photos

Uglich
Ugliich's temperature varies from -35 to +35 degrees. In winter the fairly shallow Volga freezes, and in this town the ice grows 2 to 3 metres deep! A bit rainy when we went for a 90min walking tour that included a little concert of folk songs sung by an excellent baritone group. We visited these pretty churches.

Folk singers
Now that is a balalaika! The baritone singers were great and we bought a CD.

Prince's Chamber
This construction is a memorial to the 1591 murder of Ivan the Terrible's young son Dimitri and its even bloodier aftermath. A tragic story where the facts are disputed to this day. The official Russian history says he stabbed himself in a fit. The townspeople saw it differently and killed who they thought were the murderers acting under Boris Godunov's orders. Moscow then took retribution on the townspeople.

Comments

[Karla]

Very Russian - aren't they!

[robselclark]

Many little towns have these, mostly not so decorated.

[Karla]

Gosh! There are a lot of 'cold cases' in Russian history!They love killing each other - particularly Tsars, Tsarinas, and their children, creepy monks and politicians.