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St. Petersburg has become such a popular tourist destination that the continual hoard of people is steaming gold leaf off of the picture frames in the Hermitage. To enjoy the city as a cruise destination, choose an itinerary offering three days and two nights in port. Opt for early morning and evening excursions, or visit places less traveled....

When English sailors arrived in the White Sea in 1553, they found refuge in a monastery. Remnants of their refuge have been salvaged and rebuilt in an outdoor museum outside of Moscow. To remain in existence from the fifteenth century, monasteries of the White Sea, not unlike monasteries throughout the world, needed protective walls and an armed guard. In the White Sea, the walled monastery of Solovetsky Island has endured....

Exploring the White Sea intrigues travelers as much today as it did the English sailors in 1553, who happened on the opening from the Arctic Ocean into an ice-free port in a storm. They sailed into the domain of Ivan IV, when he was young, open to trade with England and not yet terrible. The sixteenth century Merchant Adventurers fell short of an idealized transit to the Far East, when they sailed into English maritime history....

Murmansk, Russia’s largest city north of the Arctic Circle was founded over a century ago as a supply depo to Moscow in wartime. Decades later, during World War II, Murmansk was the destination of the legendary Murmansk convoys. The merchant marine convoys from Brooklyn, New York to the Kola Harbor of Murmansk, provided critical supplies to Stalin for defense of Hitler’s eastern front incursion into the then Soviet Union....