Traveling through the waterways

Our trip is progressing through several different waterways. After leaving St. Petersburg, we were on the Neva River then Lake Ladoga which is the largest lake in Europe. This crossing was at night so we did not see anything. We exited the lake and entered the Svir River. We had gone through a lock on Lake Ladoga, but did not realize it, now we entered another lock and hydropower stations. We stopped to visit the town that operates the power station and were divided into groups of 16 people to go to individual homes where the hostess shared about her life, gave us tea, pastries, and candies. Our hostess had grown up in this town and her husband worked at the hydropower station and his father before him so they were given a house. Their older son worked there as well and when he married, got the grandparents house. The younger son continues to live with his parents and is working on building a new lock for cargo ships. The process takes quite a while since only one ship can go through at a time. We continued on the Svir River with another lock taking us into Lake Onega which is the second largest lake in Europe. That night as we moved thru the lake a couple of musicians played and sang Russian songs, the DJ was funny. We went to the end of the lake which has about 1300 islands to the island of Kizhy which has very amazing churches built of aspen trees and without nails. This island is very small and a UNESCO sight where they are preserving this type of architecture. They have also a small village with old fashioned homes where several generations lived in one house, had a place for their animals,workshop areas, places to keep their boats and sleds and rooms for both summer and winter. They also had a bathhouse that is built on the side of lake in case it catches fire and also so you can jump into the cold water or snow. There was a small little wooden chapel with a belfry and a bell ringer gave a mini bellringing concert.The people who live there today are part of the restoration team including growing rye, oats and barley. There is a special mineral of very dark color that somehow produces heat to make it possible for them to grow rye. The lake also has fresh water pearls which they make necklaces to sell. There were three other boat waterways tours as well.
Our boat has a lecture series by a guest lecturer who is a guide and university professor of ancient history as well as Russian history. The assistant cruise director has given a couple of Russian language classes, but can only remember a couple of words and cannot tell you all the letters of their alphabet. Today we had a lesson on how to make Russian pancakes and vodka tasting. The pancakes are used for snacking while drinking vodka and served with caviar. Bill liked the pepper flavored.
Our weather has been very good with mostly sunny days with just a couple of days with rain showers. Today we did have fog and had to stop for about 30 minutes before it lifted. The trees are turning color each day more and more. There are two more trips before they stop for the season--the weather might be quite different in a week.




- Bill and Marilyn
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