"From Russia with Love".... we're back!

We're back from Russia, but not quite back to blogging yet. I am still sorting out thousands of pics! We took two cameras, so choosing pics takes longer than usual. We plan to have a Russia evening and I wish I had worked out the whole moviemaker versus Power Point thing before we left. Once I have the pictures a bit more organised, I'll blog some - or maybe I must have a separate blog devoted to the TRIP!

The trip to Russia was FANTASTIC! We can really recommend the Huisgenoot/ You tours. Everything was well organised and it was a very relaxing and stress free holiday. It was a cruise from St Petersburg to Moscow and there were 37 South Africans in our group.


A boat just like ours, leaving St Petersburg. We started our trip with (only) one day in St Petersburg. St Petersburg is supposed to be the Venice of the North, but it reminded me more of Paris.

St Petersburg is a beautiful city and the highlight was the visit to the Hermitage (Winter Palace). The hermitage is home to over 3 million works of art. All these treasures were evicted to Siberia during the 2nd World War. St Petersburg (then Leningrad) was in siege for 900 days... terrible suffering.... but that's another story.

Me, standing in front of Rembrandt's Prodigal Son. We had special interest in this picture after reading Henry Nouwen's "The Prodigal Son" - thanks Anne for recommending and lending this book to us!

We had a delightful little cabin - it reminded us a bit of our caravan holidays. The fact that we could unpack our cases completely and only needed to repack the morning we left again, added to the bliss of this holiday- I am totally sold on cruises and will go on one any day again!

Our tiny bathroom. To shower, you just had to shield off the toilet with the curtain and hook the shower to the wall - an excellent use of space.

We became very good friends with our dining table companions, Maria and Gert. Maria is a teacher and Gert an artist and cartoonist. All our meals were included and I gained nearly 2 kg - but it could have been worse. The Russians eat a lot of vegetables - there was even cucumber in the breakfast array. Dessert was often just fruit.

In the evenings there were music performances and dancing - no one else danced, but Jan and I danced a little one evening. (If we had practised a bit before we went, we would have danced more, but we were a bit shy and the music wasn't quite the langarmsokkie that we are used to.)

However, we loved the folk music and bought the C.D. Later on in the tour we had Russian language classes and learnt to sing Kalinka - one of the songs on the C.D. and as Russian as you get. We also did some group dances: basic line and circle dances and the men (Jan included) did a spoon dance. It was great fun. In a way I wish I were still an ordinary teacher - I would certainly have taught those dances to my class!

Dances to remember:

• Move in a circle and hold on to one another's ears/ knees / noses etc. Very funny.
• Hold hands with a partner like "Suikerbos" and next couple "dives" in and hold up hands for next couple and so on... Let the movement of couples moving under the hands of the rest flow. (I guess this doesn't make sense, but at least this "description" will help me remember it...!)
  
• Spoon dance: Hold two spoons so that they can tap like castenjets and all tap different parts of the body at the same time.

Spoon "dance" directed by our Russian tour leader, Olga.

Sunrise on the first day of sailing. The beauty of the cabin was the large outside window -this pic was taken through our window.

Jan, ready for our first excursion after St Petersburg. We had lovely weather right through and never once wore our winter coats or gloves or scarves!

Our first stop was Mandrogi - an artificial "old" town - something like Pilgrimsrust. It was a bit touristy and not really our thing, but the picnic food was great....

Russian barbecue: We had a huge succulent grilled chicken kebab, stirfried potato with onion and mushrooms and lots of salads. (Plenty of cabbage and plenty of cucumber). The potato was delicious - I have since tried my own version at home and although it looked like a train smash, it was a hit with the family.

It was interesting to see how delicately they hand paint Matreschka dolls. Guess what we bought at the souvenir shop....! Other beautiful souvenirs were pashminas and lacquer boxes. I do not want to0 much clutter in my house, so rather settled for the pashminas. Jan and I couldn't be bothered to even taste vodka. We are not all that into drinking. There was also a lot of fur to be bought here, there and everywhere, but real fur is definitely not my thing!

Back on board, we enjoyed the weather and the view and sat on the deck. A Danish passenger tried to teach me to knit her way. I loved sitting on the deck knitting a blanket for Kleintjie (Franco's expected sibling) and was rather surprised by the attention my knitting attracted. I am an inexperienced, clumsy knitter, but am no longer shy to knit in public - let them giggle all they want to, I enjoy myself and will not be intimidated like when I was young!

The sun set round 21:00 and it was full moon. How lucky can one get?

Enough for now.... More to come!