Day 10: Mandrogy in Russia Travel Log

We docked early at Mandrogy, which is what our tour director describes as “Disneyland of Russia”. It was like a Russian village themed amusement park, complete with a visitor’s center and a cartoonish “premise map”. It is not big - you can walk the perimeter in half an hour if you’re fast. We went out at 9am to explore for an hour; I think we saw half the place in that time. We spent the most time in a bronze-smith’s workshop and bought a bunch of pieces.

We then spent 1 1/2 hours at a matryoshka doll painting workshop. It was a tough activity, requiring concentration and steady hands to work with the water colour, which I don’t really have. So my matryoshka doll looks rather poor. And we didn’t have time to finish even the outermost one. At the last 15 minutes, we were forced to quit and have Russian tea time. So, that was also nice; though I think it’s a way to force us to put down our paint brushes.

The afternoon we sail down the Svir to Lake Lagoda. I was sitting in the front of the ship when it came up to the Nizhne-Svirskiy Shlyuz Lock. It was windy and the ship was swaying to the right. It was very entertaining to see how the captain right the ship to slip into the lock. Inside, there was only about a meter’s space on either side.

We sailed through Lake Lagoda during dinner; it was much rougher than Lake Onega - we can see waves splashing up the ship, but it was also spectacular.

Last updated April 18, 2020