Baltic and Ukraine 2010

 Baltic and Ukraine 2010

I am going to try to recreate some photos and brief text from my earlier blog that became inaccessible on google's picasa web when technology moved on I guess.

We joined the NG Explorer in Copenhagen. We were in Cabin 210- looking kind of tight: 

 

First stop after Sweden was Gdansk in Poland. Saw the shipyard where Lech Walesa started everything.

 

After touring Gdansk we went back to the ship and Lech himself joined us for a lecture and then to pose for photos. At one time I had a pic of us with Lech (who was clearly having a great time). I'll try to find it elsewhere.

After Poland we  shipped out to Riga, Latvia and ran into some nasty weather.

 

 

Next stop was Tallinn in Estonia where we learned about the singing revolution against the USSR.

We proceeded to Russia exiting the ship and staying at the Grand Europe Hotel. That night we had a lecture fro Gorbachev himself, with the same translator from 20 years before. The acoustics for his speech were awful- somehow we heard what he was saying in Russian and also the translation at the exact same time so no one could understand anything.

 We had some days before the Viking Dniepper River Cruise from Odessa to Kiev in Ukraine started so we enjoyed the sights in St. Pete.

Stray Dog cafe

Smolny

Lenin

Lenin's desk

Ringleaders of the Revolution

Painting of the October Revolution

Pravda

Pushkin statue in front of the Russian Museum.

Propaganda poster

 On to Odessa and the viking part of the cruise on the Lomonasov -

Lecturer told us the Finns settled Ukraine. 

Our cabin 415

Cherson on the Black Sea, originally a Greek colony

Bakschishsarai, source of a famous Pushkin poem
 

Svastopol, site of the Charge of the Light Brigade, and the Soviet fleet.

Zaporozshia - home of the real Cossacks:

Kremenchug-

 Potemkin and Potemkin villages thrown up for Catherine the Great's visit

Memorial to concentration camp victims

 

Then into Kiev itself

 Proud Ukrainian flag