Today is easter and one of our tours was to a church, St. Vladimir, just out of town that has been totally refurbished in the last ten years, and it's beautiful. Our tour guide told us that it was paid for by oligarchs because the donations of the people could never pay for it. And the main oligarch seems to have been Vladimir Putin. She saw a name connection there in his generosity, but stopped short of suggesting that the money wasn't his. The church sits on top of a hill surrounded by the Greek ruins of Cheronese. The ruins are very impressive, though the work of excavating them isn't continuing, and no one tries to stop the hoards of (Russian) tourists from running rampant over them.
Our other event tonight was the Russian sailors chorus and band, which was a typical for-the-tourists program with music played too loudly and a generally thrown-together piece of junk. The dancers did the traditional Cossack dances, though, and that was fun. I didn't say anything because everyone else loved it, and it just made me sound like a snob. They had a wonderful balalaika player, though.
Pictures: a Russian church in town near a war memorial, men playing chess in the park, st Vladimir at Cheronese, Greek pottery at Cheronese, pillars at Cheronese, kids running wild on the ruins, Russian dancers.
Im ready for bed. We have to get up early tomorrow, and it's already midnight. We are going on an optional tour tomorrow that I wish we hadn't signed up for. It's a tour of formerly top secret submarine tunnels and a panorama museum of the Crimean war. At least there's a lot of walking. I find myself sometimes going up and down the stairs here to get some exercise. The stairs on the ship are very steep, which means all the older people go down them at about 5 minutes for 12 stairs, hanging on for dear life, so you can't go around them or push them on down.
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