Right: a girl paints
matryoshka dolls
in Uglich; ceiling
of the Church of
Saint Dimitry on
the Blood, Uglich.food-and-drink experiences, including a pelmeni-making
demonstration and a very professional vodka tasting; the
crowd-pleaser here is Mamont from a Siberian distillery
founded in 1868. The most memorable, however,
is a wine tasting led by Daniel, who’s also the ship’s
sommelier. Afterwards, I order the two wines that were
standouts in his flight of six: a Monte Garu sparkling
wine from the Krasnodar region of Russia that first won
a gold medal at the 1900 Universal Exposition in Paris,
and a fascinating Georgian wine, Tbilvino Qvevris
Rkatsiteli, that surprised with a Sauternes-like nose
but pleasantly maderised taste.
Just before dusk we leave Saint Petersburg and
churn upstream through the pewter-coloured waters of
the Neva. I’m glad of a quiet afternoon on the balcony
of my Veranda suite, a well-designed space with a
Scandinavian look created by neutrals and blond-wood
fittings. For many kilometres the beech and birch
trees lining the riverbanks present a cook’s palate of
autumnal colours – tea, cinnamon, caramel, lemon
and apple red – only occasionally interrupted by the
rusty docks and locks of a country that often looks
worn and dated as soon as you leave its cities.
Almost everyone, even those who think they know
European geography well, is surprised to discover that
Lake Onega is so huge you often can’t see its shores
during our passage to Kizhi, an island bound by marshes
and covered by emerald fields, to see the wooden
Churches of the Transfiguration and the Intercession,
a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Seen from afar, the silvery wooden domes of the
churches are both stirring and spectacular; they get
their metallic appearance from the weathering of their
hand-hewn aspen shingles. Built from thousands of
logs transported to the island from the mainland, the
churches were constructed without nails, using dovetail
joinery instead. A third structure, the 14th-century
Church of the Resurrection of Lazarus, stuns with the
power of the 17 icons that comprise its iconostasis.
Nearby, in an old farmhouse, we learn a little of
life on the island, once inhabited by several thousand,
today home to only a handful of custodians. Its single
large room worked as a sort of machine for living, since
the huge brick stove occupying a third of the space
provided light and heat. “It was built off the floor so
that chickens could live underneath it in the winter
and continue to supply the family with eggs,” says our
guide. “When it was very cold – winter here usually
begins in October and runs through to May – it was
the privilege of the elderly and children to sleep on top
of the stove.” This meant that the family of 10 living
here in the late 1600s spent eight months in a single
room on a tiny island in the middle of a lake where
it was often minus 30 degrees. Then, when spring
came, they eked out a living fishing the lake or coaxing
meagre crops of rye from poor soil. “And of course➤
GOURMET TRAVELLER 147