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July 2002 |
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UPDATED August 18, 2002
If you want to return to my first page, just click on the "BACK" button at the top of the page.
Here are some photos from our river cruise on the Don, with Dawn, Larry and Eric Armstrong. I've also added some from the cruise I took without Scott up from Samara to Nizhny Novgorod. The first cruise was 11 days and we stopped at these cities:
Konstantinovsk, Ilyovka, Volgograd, Saratov, Samara, Usovka, Starocherkassk. We had a 15 year old and 16 year old translator at our disposal (both students on the cruise). This cruise was called Nadezhda which means 'hope'. It was a cruise award for the top achievers in the Rostov schools and every one of these kids had won the cruise. Amazing that they wanted to come to classes on their river cruise holiday but we constantly had a full classroom (except for Dawn and my aerobic classes at 7:30 in the morning).
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River Don lock (one of many) with Dawn and student Andrew (also one of our translators) |
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Old home in Kosmodemyansk |
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Here is the group of people I traveled with on my cruise from Samara to Nizhny Novgorod |
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This is the Fyodor Shalyapene, the cruise ship I traveled on for five days ($250 for a single cabin, all meals plus excursions in seven cities) |
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Our cruise ship seemed quite luxurious after the older ship the Armstrongs and Scott and I traveled on. Here you can see the dining room, one of my companions on our cruise, and our server, Tatiana. Tatiana speaks fluent English and is married with a two year old daughter. Her husband also works on the ship and two weeks earlier, the baby was on the ship with them, but not during this cruise. It was interesting to see people who work on the ships had dogs, cats and other people traveling with them. Can't imagine that happening on any of the cruises I've been on before (Mexican coast and Caribbean). Tatiana took great care of me - I've recently developed as sensitivity (maybe an allergy) to eggs and rice!! Since every meal served had one, the other, or both, she made up special plates just for me. I was spoiled royally. Other people kept looking at my plate and wanting what I had instead of what they had.
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This is a picture of my cabin (I called it my closet) on the Fydor Shalyapene. It was very compfortable, had my own airconditioner with separate control and a huge clean window with a beautiful unobstructed view. We had a full moon almost every night and the first three nights it was on my side of the ship. |
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In Ulianovsk there was a popular area overlooking the river where you could eat and drink and relax. This colorful poster was on the side of one of the tents and we asked our kids from the cruise to pose in front of it. Here you see Sophia, Marina and Lilit |
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Here are women greeting us in Cheboksary - the woman in the foreground wears apparel of a single woman and the one in the background has clothing that indicates she is married. In different villages the clothing is different, of course, but we learned that the embroidery on the scarves and clothing is sort of a journal, too. A person who knows how to read the embroidery can tell how old the woman was when she embroidered the material, if the woman was married, how many children she had and things that had taken place during her lifetime. |
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