Russian River Cruise - Day 2 - May 13

Near the Kremlin Palace. Unfortunately I cannot find a photo of it in my book
tsar cannon
Cathedral of the Annunciation
kremlin flare
kremlin bell towers

The second day of our tour was a cold with scattered showers day. We waited a long time outside of the Kremlin before they finally let us in. Once in the armoury and museum were rather spectacular. No photos in there.

Next on the agenda was a look at the Metro. This, in my opinion, was a disaster or a very bad joke. Our troop of tourists - in the 50 to 85 year bracket hopped on and off the metro several times while stopping in different halls for talks about the surroundings. Low light, and pictures were a impossible. There was regular traffic on the metro so this was less than optimum time to be there. I think they really should have made this one an option. The metro truly is spectacular though.

We had an 85 yr. old lady, who was traveling with her daughter, with us. She was shepherded around and looked after by this daughter and the other Jewish Princesses. Of course, their needs were the primary concern to all of us, as far as they knew.

We had lunch in a restaurant. By this time my cold was evident and I could not eat anything.

Finally back to the ship and I fell immediately into bed. I slept for must have been 18 hours. My nightshirt was soaking wet from my fever when I woke. So, perhaps some of my jaded view of Moscow is due to the weather and my virus.

Russian River Cruise - Day 1 - May 12

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.

Russian River Cruise - Getting there

schipol (Amsterdam Airport) from our hotel window
The picture in our cabin
Moscow from the airplane
Amsterdam from the airplane window

We left home on the 10th of May, spent an overnite in Amsterdam at a hotel in the airport.
The next afternoon we flew out to Moscow. We flew business class but the Amsterdam to Moscow did not seem to have a business class arrangement. I don't remember what kind of an airplane it was, or who's airline it was.
The photos are taken through the dirty airplane windows, so they are not exactly the best.

We were met at the airport by our Uniworld representative and taken to our ship, the Litvinov. The Picture on the wall of our cabin was the best part. I was pleased to see that I had a similar shot from the air.

Our Uniworld material had said that the Russian ship was not up to the standard of the European River cruise ships... for instance the River Duchess that we were on in 2005 was luxurious compared to this thing. We had a noise window that let in cold air, and a heater that we could not seem to get them to fix. The shower was contained in the bathroom but worked rather well, except for the sudden change of temperatures when others were showering. We must try not to drink the water. We were told to brush our teeth with bottled water. They did not give us this water, but we had to buy it. The walls were thin with no sound barrier. We had bunks with a tiny table between them. As we had booked late, this was the cabin we had. There were very few luxury suites or larger cabins on board, anyway and no chance for an upgrade. I could hear the person on the other side of the wall from me breathing. The food was adequate, but not very inspiring.