Kizhi

Sunday, 23 September 2018

Our morning "excursion" was to the ship's bridge. When we're traveling rivers, canals, and shallow lakes, the navigation requires the complete attention of the crew, but on deep water Lake Onega, the ship could be put on autopilot and we could have a visit.

Several of these hovercraft plied the waters between Moscow and St. Petersburg.

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The Kizhi logo is based on the name in Cyrillic: Кижи

Kizhi is a small island in Lake Onega that has been turned into an open-air museum of wooden buildings transported and refurbished from across Karelia (the part of Russia next to Finland). This was our favorite stop on the trip.

A typical farmhouse. The ground level is a barn, while the two upper floors are living areas and workshops.

Logs in the farmhouse. I liked the highly visible rings and the five-pointed "star" where limbs had come off when the tree was young.

Inside the farmhouse a woman was working on traditional embroidery. What makes this embroidery distinct is that the back looks exactly like the front -- there is no "backside".

The Chapel of the Archangel Michael.

A bell ringer played about every half hour.

The summer church was still being restored. Complete restoration will take about another two years.

The domes above the winter church.

The iconostasis in the winter church.

The weather was cool and blustery with some short rain showers.

The rain may have been an annoyance, but it did give us a nice rainbow.

As we were leaving we got to see the bigger picture that is difficult to get when you are close to the structures. This is the summer church and bell tower.

The complete Kizhi Pogost (rural church and graveyard); this area is a UNESCO World Heritage site. From left: summer church, bell tower, winter church.

The farmhouse as seen from the water.

We'd love to return to Kizhi. Since this visit was in the afternoon and very late in the tourist season, a lot of the buildings were shut down, and we didn't have enough time to walk the whole island. It would be a great place to spend the entire day.