Midnight sun

Svir Stroi on Wednesday May 11




Today we spent most of the day sailing and it was a beautiful day. At mid day it was warm enough to go without a jacket as we sailed which was really nice. We saw patches of snow along the sides but this warm weather had melted the ice that was such a problem last week when they came toward St Petersburg in the ship. The captain Boris said that there were ice chunks in the water as we sailed last night but I never heard or saw them. I wish I had! We are the first boat going in this direction for GCT this year and so the souvenir places are just opening up and were glad to see us!

We read and watched the scenery and enjoyed breakfast and lunch. During lunch we came to the first locks on the river and we enjoyed sitting and watching as we ate. The little village where we stopped was right past the first lock. We went into the home of Uri and Vera and had typical Russian pastries and tea and got to ask questions about their normal every day lives. It was one of the most interesting home visits we have had because the houses are quite quaint and they really live so simply. It is hard to imagine them living without running water and yet they do it quite nicely. We had to divide into two groups within our yellow group as the house was so tiny. We spent about an hour there and then we were able to go shopping in the little stalls along the paths. A lot of the things here were made in the village which was nice. Jim and I went to the market which was so tiny that it could not hold more than 5-6 people pushed together waiting to pay. You pointed to what you wanted. We got a couple of pepsi colas as they had no cokes and they were much cheaper than on the ship. We have a refrigerator in our room so it is nice to be able to get them as cold as I like. We had fun shopping for different ones on our list and looking at all the items. We made our way back to the boat and enjoyed sitting outside and reading for awhile and watching the scenery go by. It is 10:30 at night and it is still daylight-just hard to get used to this! The sunsets are lovely and cameras just don’t catch is all.



Tomorrow we will be in Natasha’s town which is the largest “city” in this area. We are there all day so that will be fun. We take a city tour and then we will be on our own all afternoon.



I forgot to mention one adventure we had the other night. I reached to turn the switch on the headboard that turns off the light and sparks flew everywhere and there was this lovely burning smell and pop. I got up and found one of the overhead light bulbs had blown, broken off and landed beside the bed-fortunately it was that way instead of landing or hitting one of us! I lay awake long enough to be sure there was no fire-I could tell a circuit had been tripped as the switches didn’t turn on the lights. We were too tired to want anyone to come fix it that night so we told them on the way to breakfast and when we finished breakfast, they had it all fixed. Whew.



The trees along the river are birch and evergreens that are tall and thin, The leaves are beginning to come on the birch so that if you look closely, you will see the hint of green coming through the woods.