THE NEW GARDEN

This is another blog entry that is going to be mainly pictures. John has become a born again gardener and he is really truly into it.

.

All the stuff to plant today 

While I was gallivanting through Ukraine and living a life of luxury on a river cruise John started digging up a large portion of our lawn. I use the word lawn  loosely, as it was mostly crabgrass.  Anyway he dug it out down to about 8 inches which probably got most of the crabgrass out but I'm sure it will come back to visit us.

Today was the fun part. We went to Green acres and bought $200 worth of plants.  John planted them ALL today. 

HOW TO DO IT?

I took a class last week and learned how to weave this beautiful Russian spiral chain.  It is something that seems to come out looking wonderful no matter what colors you choose.  After I had done quite a bit of it, I remembered that I had bought these lovely resin copies of amber (avery long way of saying fake amber) at the bead show, and I want to make the whole piece just flow together.  I'm still working out how to connect the beads to the pendant.  It has a hole drilled side to side near the top.  I've already tried putting aa sting from either side, but it doesn't give it the structural ability to stay where I want it', even without an earthquake.  

KIEV

Today we are in Kiev, which is a much more beautiful city than I remember from 20 years ago, and I have some really wonderful memories from that time.  It has changed monumentally with independence, though our guide tells us that the beautiful changes are lately the result of corruption and officials getting rich because they were previously associated with the communist party and were in the right place at the right time to benefit from privatization.  On the other hand, Ukraine has never been independent in its entire history, so, perhaps in the long view, twenty years is a short time to learn to run a democratic country. 

As tourists, however, we mostly visited old churches and monasteries that survived communism, or have been rebuilt to look like they might have been before WW II.  

we looked at a lot of places from the bus, then had a very interesting tour at Sophia and another at the cave monasteries.  St Sophia is no longer a church but is still a holy site to many. It is also a Unesco world heritage site. About a couple hundred  years ago somebody got the bright idea to go over the frescoes with oil paints. We weren't allowed to take pictures inside st Sophia's, but the other pix are from the oldest monastery in Kiev. 

And finally shopping.  

Cruising, all day

It was a very low key day on board today, because we spent the whole day going up the river. No port calls. Also, this picture is what I don't like about this tour. This is our shower and also our whole bathroom. A navy shower is a luxurious treat compared to this baby. 

These are our favorite dinner companions, John and Jean from England and Bobbie from Connecticut. 

Tonight was the captains dinner followed by the crew show. The women who work in the dining rooms are absolutely adorable. 

HOME OF THE COSSACKS

We got to sleep in this morning because we were mostly cruising all day until we arrived. Zheromonov, home of the Cossacks.  

We visited the Cossack museum today.  It was pretty interesting.  The building is made of granite, and the various artifacts are nicely displayed.  

For what it's worth, the Cossacks weren't an ethnic group of any kind, but were a loosely organized band of escaped slaves and serfs, tough guys, and the like who were a law unto themselves because they said they were and had the cunning and muscle to pull it off.  Think pirates, but on shore.  They were mercenaries for anyone whose ideals loosely matched their own.  They wanted freedom and fought for the Ukrainians to be out from under Poland.  But Katherine the great made them offers, and they ended up fighting the Ukrainians. After they did Katherine's  dirty work, she broke them up, exiling them to Siberia and elsewhere so they wouldn't be a threat to her.  Some were still around during the revolution, but made the unfortunate mistake of siding with the whites rather than the reds.

After visiting the Cossack museum we went out to another place on the island where they claim to have a Cossack horse show.  I was looking forward to this, because we aw one in Hungary, and it ws fabulous.  This one was so-so.  They did wonderful tricks on horses, but they did a very long and boring part of the program that was just kind of slapstick version of guys acting like sixth graders.  I also thought they didn't have the professionalism of the Hungarian horsemen.

 They kind of looked

Ike they learned the tricks yesterday and were still practicing.  More interesting to me was the fact that there was a bridal party there, all in their fancy wedding and bridesmaid dresses, sitting in these dirty stands and waiting for five busloads  of tourists to arrive before they could watch the show.  Thy had nice souvenirs there, and I got. Very nice plate from a woman who said she painted it and showed me her artist union card.  

Following that we came back to the ship for dinner, followed by a fairly uninteresting music performance of Ukrainian music played too loudly, IMHO. 

VISITING KHERSON

Today we are visiting Kherson, our first town on the Dnieper river.  Up until now we have been on the Black Sea.  

Out on-board treat today was a buffet of typical Ukrainian food served on the outdoor deck.  I thought  all of it was delicious.  They did something very simple with shredded carrots that was particularly wonderful.  After lunch we went on a city tour of Kherson, visiting some big commie memorials and St. Katherine's church, which is a really lovely and simple church. 

Today is a holiday, May 9, Victory Day.  This decorated veteran was very happy to have zoe take his picture.  The people playing whistle and bandura were at the church and were accompanying these adorable girls dancing.  

I think a lot of what we might have seen today was closed for the holiday.  Generally speaking, a lot of the business of this town is around shipping, but because of the economy and the price of fuel, our guide tells us that there is very little shipping on the Dnieper river.

This bench in the park is where brides and grooms come on their wedding day and put a padlock on this bench.  When we looked at them closely,many of the locks are engraved with the names of bride and groom.  Probably part of a wedding package.  

Last night we had a music contest. We had to name the country a song came from, then answer a question about it. We won.  

DASVI'DANJA YALTA

This picture is kind of the money shot of yalta, called the swallows nest.  I didn't get to see it yesterday because I was sick when the bus left.  So just for me, they went by it as we sailed out of Yalta today.  

Today we had a tour of a palace of a very rich man who's name I never quite heard.  We had been told ahead of time that he incorporated Florentine, Moorish, and English architecture into this building, so I was expecting a McCastle, but it was actually quite nice.

 Everybody's favorite room was an ocean-facing room that was kind of a sun porch with ivy growing on the walls and ceiling.  

During the Yalta conference, Churchill stayed at this house and was very

enamored of one of the lions.  There's a story that he said to Stalin that he knew of the old Russian custom that if a visitor asks for something most valuable he is give it, so he would like the lion.  Stalin reportedly said the most valuable thing he had to give was socialism.  

After our morning tour we came back to the boat for our gala sailing away party where we were allowed to buy a two for one champagne which was really fairly awful before lunch.  We will now sail until sometime tomorrow morning because we are now backtracking through the Black Sea on our way back to the Dnieper River. We just had a Ukrainian lesson, which was Ukrainian and Russian which we learned in great depth in an hour.  NOT.  it was interesting, though.  I have more or less learned the consonants but not the vowels.  There are actually only7 letters in Russian that represent the same sound in English.  There are many more that look the same but represent different sounds.  

By the way, I got an update today for the blog ap for iPad and it does something different again from before. Yikes.  

It's a bit windy on the deck as we depart.

Zoe's dessert at lunch.  

YALTA

I was in yalta 20 years ago with Judy.  I almost can't recognize the place today.  It's still a lovely beach resort with a big boardwalk, but the boardwalk is now the width of a four lane road with a big amusement park near the water.  There are lots of big stores, many of them western and expensive, but not at the level of Fendi, Chanel, etc.  most of the visitors to Yalta are Russians or Ukrainians.  Our group went on a city tour this morning, but I didn't feel too well, so I didn't go.  Of course, a half hour after they left, I felt fine.  I walked down to the boardwalk, and tried to find the hotel Judy and I stayed at.  I'm usually pretty good at finding a place I've been before, but this time things had changed so much, I couldn't even find the street we used to walk up.  

We saw some interesting things on the boardwalk, including about four more ATMs that aren't interested in Zoe's card.  

Other things that are memorable: a rental that rents little electric powered cars to kids of about 5, who drive them around among the pedestrians, the roller bladers, the bicyclists, the old lady dancers, the statue people, the children lining up for a parade -- we'll, you get the idea.  Sort of a tamer version of Venice beach.  But there is a church on the boardwalk.  

Tomorrow we have a tour to another palace, and I hope to high heaven that they have souvenirs there, because yalta, being a haven for Russian tourists, doesn't have any of the Russian souvenirs I want. They have more beachy-type souvenirs like shells and sailor hats and striped ersatz sailor shirts.  One of the big draws here are these photo places that have a throne, or Cinderella's carriage, or some such and lots of exotic Louis XVI clothes you can dress yourself or your kid in for pictures.  Sort of like we have for western places.  

SEVASTOPOL, DAY TWO

Many included the tours on a cruise ship are kind of lame and Viking has its share of those.
Today's free tour was not one of those. Went to a nearby town of Bakhchisarai, which, unlike the rest of the Crimean peninsula is more Muslim, with a history of Shiia Muslims. The name of the town means palace of the gardens, and the palace we visited was beautiful. It was a lovely drive through the country and we saw some very interesting sights as we whizzed past them on the bus. It was a trip where I actually wished I had been driving, because there were a few five-minute stops I would have loved to make, just for the picture opportunities.
Today is part of a long May Day holiday, especially since May Day more or less coincided with Easter this year, so there are lots of picnickers, hikers, bicyclists, and people on family outings all over the place, and it would have been nice to stop and see what they were doing.
But back to the palace. I'm always surprised at how much Arabic art, once you separate out the Arabic characters and focus on design elements, simply looks like Arts and Crafts style. Enjoy the pictures.

The second event, an "optional" excursion, which means cough up some extra money for this sucker, was to see a panorama and some submarine tunnels. This didn't sound all that note resting to me, and we almost decided to kiss the money goodbye and not go, but in the end we were both too cheap for that. Good thing. The panorama, named as one of the best ten in the world (where are these panoramas? I've never even heard of them before) is a remembrance of the Crimean war. It is housed in a big round building. The area closest to the viewers is 3-D, but the background is painted on canvas. There ate lots of fool the eye tricks to it, like a 3-D (as in actually constructed) wagon beg pulled by a Horst that is panted on the canvas. It's just far enough away from you, that it feels like you are really long out at this battle from the top of a hill. The original panorama was painted in the early 1900s, and everyone thought it was wonderful, except Tsar Nicholas, who wanted the Russians to look more triumphant, though by that time they were losing the war. Anyway, I was really entranced.
The second part of the tour was to a subway hideout where the Russians used to IDE their subs during the Cold War. It's a lot of tunnels and canals and pretty cold inside. I found it marginally interesting, but since I had only brought a sweater and not a jacket, I was more involved in how cold I was inside the caves. I think the Russians are more interested in this stuff than we are, because during the time these caves were open, no townspeople knew what was going on here, and the whole thing was one of those secrets that were so prevalent in the Soviet Union. So now that they can see, they are fascinated.

The first seven pictures are taken at Bakhcgiserai. The next bunch is where the panorama was only one picture, and near the submarine hidey hole. The kind of dark one is me, with my arm outstretched to show the thickness of the door, which is enough to withstand a nuclear blast. It was all very James Bond-ish.

Later tonight I went down to the promenade by the sea. I was fun to see all the Russians out enjoying themselves. There was a band playing on the boardwalk, and they played something that sounded like a patriotic song and I saw these three women standing up on the bridge singing along with gusto.

SEVASTOPOL

Sevastopol is a major military port on the Black Sea for both Russia and Ukraine. We arrived here today and leave sometime tomorrow night. It's a nice place because its on,themselves, but the,town is a military town.
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.