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Tsar attraction: cruising Russia

by Brian Johnston | 13 Jun 2013

Cruise the lakes and waterways that meander between Moscow and St Petersburg to watch the best of Russian culture and countryside unfold.

Mighty Moscow

Moscow, with its bold contemporary energy and dramatic history, couldn’t be a better introduction to Russia, which is why river cruises usually linger three nights here.

Standing in Red Square, so familiar from television, is a great travel moment, and St Basil’s Cathedral is a marvel of multicoloured domes striped like candy. In contrast, its sombre interior recalls an old, mysterious Russia of bearded prophets and sad saints.

The adjacent Kremlin – for centuries the centre of Russian power – is a highlight. Three cathedrals glow with jasper and gold, sporting enough frescoes to crick your neck. The treasury museum is crammed with imperial bling, from gigantic carriages to dainty Fabergé Easter eggs.

Moscow is Russia’s present too, so take the chance to ride the jawdropping subway system, browse fashion stores and enjoy afternoon tea at legendary GUM department store, opposite one of the few reminders of the USSR, Lenin’s tomb.

City of Palaces

In St Petersburg, parks have been replanted, palaces polished to imperial-era glory and theatres buzz once more with ballet and concerts.

Everywhere you turn, baroque avenues and pastel palaces are reflected in cool waters of ornate canals and the Neva River. Museums and palaces are outstanding, and the 4km Nevsky Prospekt is lined by wedding-cake mansions, art deco department stores and designer boutiques.

River cruises usually stay three nights in St Petersburg, but anyone with a taste for culture, music and history should extend their stay. A good mid-range accommodation option is the Novotel St Petersburg Centre, conveniently just off Nevsky Prospekt.

For a taste of St Petersburg in its imperial heyday though, stay at the Grand Hotel Europe, where the Romanov Suite will make you feel like an empress.

A traditional Russian meal at the elegant Caviar Bar, with its antique mirrors and green marble columns, is a fitting finale to a sumptuous journey.

Volga voyage

Moscow is the splendid overture to the grand opera of a journey through the Volga-Baltic Waterway to St Petersburg. Along the way lie vast monastery-studded lakes and gold-domed cities, gurgling rivers and cloud-reflecting lakes.

The morning after leaving Moscow, you’re on the legendary Volga River

and, after lunch, pulling into Uglich, where little boys sell wildfl owers on the promenade. This is a sleepy town of pickle shops and crumbling Sovietera apartment blocks, boasting dainty, pastel-coloured churches and belltowers among bright orange larch trees.

Like many of Russia’s provincial cities, it has a history full of drama: the young Prince Dmitry was murdered here in 1584 by the scheming Boris Gudonov.

The following day you dock on the elegant waterfront of Yaroslavl. The venerable provincial city bursts with onion-domed churches, none more beautiful than the fresco-filled Church of Elijah the Prophet. The town has an attractive bustle, just the place for some wandering into handicraft stores and a covered market bursting with cheeses and hanging sausages.

As you head north, the sky becomes enormous, the forest seemingly endless – and endlessly beautiful. Occasionally you spy lopsided wooden houses with picket fences. As the scenery passes, passengers are content to eat meals of improbable size and attend onboard lectures on Russian culture and history.

You dock in Kuzino for an excursion to Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery, founded

by St Cyril in 1397. Its reflections are flung shimmering into Lake Sivertskoye. It’s a tumbledown place slowly being restored to its former glory, with exquisite icons hanging in its museum.

Then, as you head out into the vastness of Lake Onega, a magical highlight appears on pine-clad Kizhi Island. The Church of the Transfiguration is like an illustration from a Russian folk tale, an ancient wooden church with 22 gleaming domes covered in aspen shingles. Beside it stands a little winter church, cosy and intimate, its altar dropping dahlias in touching rural simplicity. There’s also a World Heritage collection of other wooden buildings: farmhouses, cottages and windmills set among stands of aspen and larch.