The photos are from the first day on board the Litvinov that is docked on the Volga River. I am shooting through our cabin window as its cold out and I already have the beginnings of a cold. This was to turn into a major cold that just knocked me out for 24 hours after our first day's tour.
The drive in from the airport was very hard on my sinuses and eyes that are very sensitive to air pollution, especially of the oil/gas/exhaust kind. There is much construction going on in Moscow. They need more roads and I believe they are working on that. They have horrific traffic jams now. We were lucky to get to our ship in what seemed to me to be far too long but was probably record time for them.
Upon arrival we were requested to unpack our bags and leave them outside for storage.. I guess there was not enough room in the cabins for them. I would have preferred to keep mine as a 'drawer' to store sweaters, etc. The zipper on Pat's bag was broken. He managed to open the suitcase, unpack and fix the zipper before we put them out for storage.
We had dinner after unpacking -- breakfast is the only buffet, the other meals are a choice of two things and served by the waiters/waitresses. After dinner we rushed to the Arrival Talk with Lena Gurieva, our cruise manager. She was really quite good and doing the best she could with what she had. While at this talk, we were given pages to view to decide our extra optional tours. While looking at this, I took the tickets booklet out of my bag to get the Uniworld schedule. We were looking over these options, and deciding what we wanted to do, when I discovered that the tickets were missing from my lap behind my bag where I had put them. Very disconcerting! This made it very difficult to concentrate on the introductory talk. Pat spotted them in their distinctive case up on the stage on a side table. I have no idea who took them or how they got up there. There is no way they dropped on the floor or I would have noticed. The distinctive case is quite big. I think someone 'pick pocketed' me. Why? I have no idea, but I am not one to loose important documents like that. I suppose there was nothing in the case but the electronic tickets, no passports, no money, nothing a thief could easily use.
This set the tenor for the whole trip. We didn't at first realize it but we were operating under the auspices of Murphy's Law. Anything that could go wrong did. The worst sort of luck.
We had a beautiful sunset the first nite. The picture of the ship is one that was docked across the river from the Litvinov.
The last of the photos from St. Petersburg, Russia. We get back to our ship in 5:00 o'clock traffic on a Friday. Somehow the logic of the planning of this optional tour escapes me, totally. I did not get a 'book' of St.P in town, the gift shop had none left. Can you believe it? They also ran out of stamps, so some of our cards will go with us to Estonia to be mailed. The service at the gift shop was awful. We are packed and are to catch our bus at 10:00 am for the drive to Tallin, Estonia, as we are booked for the Baltic Countries extension, coach tour.
