Aug 29 Kizhi

After exercise and breakfast, we meet at 9 to hear about the optional tours coming up in St. Petersburg. A couple from the UK sits with us and we chat about travel. A woman in the group asks a question about staying on in St. P after the tour and since that is our plan, we hunt her up and get acquainted. Her name is Diane B. We exchange contact info and later learn that she also plans to be visiting a friend in Budapest at the time we plan to be there, so maybe we can connect then.
I took the captain's bridge tour before lunc, seeing the navigation equipment and learning more about the ship. Our ship is now out on  huge lake Onega, Europe's second largest lake. The water is choppy and has waves, so I decide to be on the safe side, I better take a motion sickness pill. Later we leave the Lake to cruise the Volga Baltic canal to visit a tiny island of Kizhi, near the northern end of the lake. This island has an open-air museum of wooden architecture. This is a UNESCO heritage site consisting of 80 monuments of wooden architecture, some which have been relocated to this site and restored. The most impressive sight is the church of the Transfiguration of Preobrazhenskaya, which has five tiers of 22 domes and was built in 1714 without use of a single nail. Woodworkers here demonstrate their skill in using axes to shape pine and aspen shingles. The buildings are remarkable and as the sun moves across the sky, the buildings shange color, seeming to glisten with silver roofs. Very interesting!
We learn more about Lake Onega, an enormous freshwater reservioir with about 1300 islands. We also learn that the Volga-baltic waterway, which was designed and contructed to join all the various rivers and waterways, was begun in 1709 to connect St. P with the interior of Russia. The use of dams and deepening the waters allowed larger vessels to navigate and provided Russia with trade access to the ocean. It is this series of waterways which now also is being promoted as a tourist route, and indeed is the one we are on now.
During the afternoon, I took a napkin-folding class-lots of fun--now if only I can remember some of them!
Tonight is a pirare's dinner on ship and the crew is all dressed as pirates and having great fun telling passengers they must dance or sing for their supper or pay a fine. There is entertainment and lots of laughing and acting silly.