In July, 2010, Carol and I took a ten day trip to Russia,
The Passage of Peter the Great tour. It was purchased through the
University of
California Cal
Discoveries alumni travel program and managed by AHI Travel, which manages alumni
tours (quite well).
We flew from Boston to Frankfurt and then on to Moscow, where we
boarded our river cruise ship, the MS. Leonid Krasin, named
after a hero of the Russian Revolution who was mysteriously murdered in
the 1920s. We stayed on the boat for the entire
trip down the Volga and through huge lakes and reservoirs, enjoying new
friends, good food and drink, really interesting talks by
our expert UCB professor, Vince Resh, and another group from Brown
University, which provided another good lecturer.
Actually, there were other tour members from the University of Texas,
Iowa and other schools on the boat, as well
as large contingents of Germans and French tourists. We were
assisted by a terrific tour manager from AHI, Philip Ryan, guides
assigned to our group for the entire trip, and experts in each city we
visited. The tour was heavy on art and culture, but
Vince introduced us to important ecological issues and we were never
far from a discussion on WWII or the Communist
revolution and Stalin (who killed 500,000 gulag prisoners in the course
of building the Moscow-Volga canal on which we cruised).
The only down side of the trip was the unexpectedly hot weather, helped
not one bit by the almost total lack of air conditioning in
Russia (fortunately our boat was air conditioned) and occasionally
large crowds in the over heated museums and palaces we visited.
I have created slide shows on each of the following topics (just click
and go to each, having a tad of patience to wait for the show to
start). My goal
is not to provide a visual narrative so much as visual impressions.
Head over to Wikopedia or Google for detailed information on each topic.
When the show is over click on your browser's back button to come back
to this page. Be sure to scroll down as each show starts so you can
see images in their entirety.
Moscow
The Kremlin and Red Square
On the Volga River
Yaroslavl
Uglich
Gorisy
Kizhi and Mandrogi
St. Petersburg
The Hermitage
St. Isaac's St.
Petersburg
Pushkin
Peterhof
Reunion in Berkeley
Enjoy, and please remember that the images
may only be used for personal enjoyment. Contact me for any other uses:
ron.goodenow@gmail.com.
Click here to
visit my photography web site for more travel and other photos.