When I was with the City of St. Petersburg one of my projects was the dredging of the port. That year the MF Gruziya ( a Russian cruise ship) came into the port. https://web.itu.edu.tr/bilgili/Ships/soviet/blasco/gruziya/gruziya.htm
The captain questioned me about the depth of water in the port. We had dredged it to 23 feet. I told him that he had one meter under his keel, then he was happy.
The Russians invited me to come aboard for a New Years cruise to nowhere.
I went. The ship doctor was a lady. She invited me to her cabin on New Years eve. I went. It turned out that she had invited four of the crew as well. The food onboard the ship was horrible. Much of it as inedible. The eggs at breakfast were runny and not fully cooked. I had French onion soup at dinner. The soup came, it was just broth. I asked the waiter where the bread and cheese floating on it were? He came back with some French bread and a can of Parmesan cheese. The food the crew had brought the the doctor’s cabin was delicious. If they had cooked that for the passengers it would have been great, but they had tried to do what other ships do, they should have provided real Russian food that they knew how to cook!
