It has been a long time between emails as we have been kept busy and entertained almost continuously. As our wonderful guide, Victoria, on the Viking River Cruise says "The life of a tourist is not supposed to be easy". Her English was exceptional, almost without accent and she was extremely knowledgeable with a good sense of humour. 

 

We are now on the plane from Moscow to Istanbul for the last part of our journey - 10 days in Turkey so I will start where I left off last time.

 

Tallinn is a lovely old city and we were staying in the old area in a hotel that was built in the 1950's as the headquarters for the Soviet Maritime Officers. It was renovated and turned into a hotel in 2001. The position made it easy just to walk around the cobblestone streets looking at the different areas - town square, Danish Kings Garden, the city wall and Toompea Hill with views over the city. Once again we had a great guide who took us to the area where the yachting was held for the 1980 Moscow Olympics and also to an open air museum not far out of town where many old buildings had been moved from others areas of Estonia. The church built in 1699 was the oldest of them. The first picture at night is part of the old city and the second is at the open air museum with all of us.

 

From Tallinn we caught a train to St Petersburg which was 6 hours of very hot and humid, and not very comfortable travelling. Not to be recommended despite the fact that we went 1st class! They had a menu for the snack bar but most of the things were not available! No air conditioning except for opening a couple of very small windows in the whole carriage. The local trains in Tallinn were very new and stylish but our international one was not. It was staffed by Russians so may be owned by Russia as well. 

 

Once we arrived in St Petersburg we were transferred directly to the Viking Truvor, our home for the next 12 nights. It is a beautiful ship recently refurbished and quite spacious for a ship even in our cabin. There were 205 passengers on board. We stayed in St Petersburg for 3 nights and visited the Hermitage, with its amazing collection of artworks and Catherine's Palace with one of its rooms panelled in amber and abundance of gold both inside and outside. The palace was badly damaged during the war but has been extensively repaired to its former glory. There was certainly no expense spared in the building and decorating of these palaces. The next picture is the entrance to the amber room. As you can see there were many tourists in all the places we visited. 

 

Peterhof Grand Palace and Park with its hundreds of gravity fed fountains, not requiring pumps, was the following day and it is on the shores of the Gulf of Finland. It was also very lavish inside and out.

 

From St Petersburg we travelled on the Neva River, Lake Ladoga, Svir River, Lake Onega, the Volga Baltic Waterway, Volga River and Moscow Canal through 16 locks built by Stalin over 1300kms to Moscow. We stopped at Mandrogy and Kizhi Island, both set up with craftsmen in typical wooden villages, where the unsuspecting tourist is encouraged to buy hand painted eggs, matryoshka dolls, linen articles, woodwork and many other items. Russia and Estonia both have a big flax/linen industry. Kizhi Island was another open air museum with old houses and is famous for its timber church with 22 domes built without nails and pictured below.

 

I will leave this here and continue another day as I have had a lot of problems with trying to send emails.