We had a really good time, met some people who were willing to share a cab with us, and Zoe finally found a cash machine that would give her some money. Wow. She's now got money AND a suitcase. Life can' t get much better than that. And I got Easter bread.
The scam was on the way back. One of the common things here is that people have animals the rest of us don't have at home, and they drag them out in public to get their pictures taken with tourists. So this guy had a monkey,and he said it was 14 hrevnys for a picture with the monkey. That's a little less than $2. While I was taking the picture his friend with an eagle? came over and got in the picture. When we finished, monkey owner told her it was 40 hrevnys $10, for the monkey and another 40 for the bird. I told her not to pay that, they just kept arguing with us,and finally i took out the camera and said I'll just delete the damn picture with the bird, you can get ypur 40 hrevnys and we are outta here. While we were having this ukrainian stand-off, I noticed that the two Ukrainian girls standing near us were enjoying the show so I knew we were getting scammed.
She finally gave him the 40, didn't delete the picture, and everyone went home pissed off. I guess it was a classical ugly American moment.
We went on the Jewish tour this afternoon. It was mildly interesting, but could have been a lot better. Someone in our group who was on a different bus had a much better guide than ours.
Yesterday afternoon while zoe was taking a nap, I walked down to the little church at the end of the pier, and guess what, the priest was blessing Easter bread. This time the people there were younger, and they brought both bread and colored eggs in baskets. The baskets were covered with fancy cloths decorated with Ukrainian cross stitch. It was so sweet. There were even a bunch of pretty girls from the housekeeping staff on our boat there with their basket of Easter bread, (kulich) which you can buy anywhere. I was kind of glad to discover that it's kind of a dry bread. I always thought I was making it too dry or overcooking it or something, but now I realize that's really how it's supposed to be. Here they decorate it with colored sprinkles.
Heres a link to some information, but I can't make it live, so you'll have to cut and paste to read about it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kulich
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