With Love, From Russia

by Suzanne Leworthy

Suzanne Leworthy and her husband, Jim Leworthy, S BComm 66, joined the Concordia Alumni Travel Program trip to Russia, Cruise the Passage of Peter the Great, from August 31 to September 12, 2008. This was the couple's second Alumni Travel Program trip. The first was to Antarctica in February 2008.

Our delightful introduction to Russia was on a cruise aboard the recently renovated M/S Repin, which took us along the picturesque waterways from Moscow to St. Petersburg.

St. Basil's Cathedral and Kremlin at entrance to Red Square
(Suzanne is under Nestlé banner on middle right)

Our first destination in Moscow was the Kremlin, which lies on 76 acres that feature a parkland, cathedrals, government buildings and the incredible Armoury Museum that houses six original Fabergé eggs, as well as royal vestments, crowns and jewels. We marvelled at Moscow's ornately decorated Metro stations, with their chandeliers, frescoes and sculptures, cleanliness (despite the conspicuous absence of waste bins) and efficiency. Traffic in the streets above remained in a constant gridlock because seven million people use them daily.

Outside Moscow, we toured Star City, the training centre for Russian cosmonauts. The openness of the new Russia was very much apparent, since photography was permitted almost everywhere. The cruise officially got underway on September 4, when we left Moscow and sailed through the infamous Moscow Canal.

Palatial arch over Moscow Canal lock at Uglich

Over the next five days, we navigated through 19 locks while stopping to visit some colourful, fascinating towns: Uglich, with its Palace of the Princes, where Ivan the Terrible's youngest son was murdered; Yaroslavl, the oldest city on the Volga; Goritsky, where we visited local homes, talked with residents about their everyday lives and were served bread and vodka; and magical Kizhi Island, with its two wooden churches (for summer and winter).

When not touring, travellers were able to enjoy entertaining shipboard activities, including language lessons, folk dancing, vodka tasting (proud to announce that yours truly won the tasting competition!), evening musical performances, political and historical lectures and craft/ souvenir shopping tips. On September 11, after sailing through Europe's two largest lakes--Ladoga and Onega--and the Volga- Baltic Canal, we arrived in St. Petersburg, which is located on the beautiful River Neva. The city was originally built on 23 islands and is rightfully called the Venice of the North. The bridges crossing the Neva are all raised at 1:30 a.m. to allow cargo ships to pass, thereby splitting the city in two during the night.

Visiting the Hermitage Museum, the exquisite green-and-white painted Winter Palace of the tsars, was a dream come true. It contains more than three million objets d'art (not all displayed at once) in its vast rooms--one week would not be enough to take it all in. That evening, we also attended the ballet Giselle in its historic old theatre. We discovered that St. Petersburg has traffic issues, too. We arrived late for the ballet after our bus idled at one intersection for 20 minutes!

Our whirlwind, two-day St. Petersburg itinerary included the imposing island fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul, the burial place of Peter the Great and Catherine the Great and the recently discovered remains of Nicolas II, the last tsar, and his immediate family. We felt the cool mist from the extensive fountains at the Peterhof and were dazzled by the Amber Room at Catherine's Palace.

Historically fascinating and politically eye-opening, I would recommend this trip to all travellers.