Tourists in Kiev

We stayed put in Kiev for our April Easter vacation, playing tourist and host to Kim's mom and stepdad, Shirley and John.  It was fun to be able to relax and see the sites and sounds of Kiev, and to show off our life to family.

The weather wasn't particularly agreeable for being tourists, rather rainy, windy, and, for a few days, downright cold.  Fortunately, Mom and John came prepared.  We spent the first few days doing our regular routine things in life:  grocery shopping (which takes hours!), going to the produce market, watching Angela horseback ride, going to church.  On Monday of the week we took Mom down to Independence Square and showed her the main road called Kreshatek.  During the weekend this road is closed to traffic, so it is a great place to stroll - that is when it is warm enough.   The street is full of brand name shops like Marks & Spencers (British), Gap, Espirit, Adidas, Zara, etc.  I think the prices jump by at least 25% down on Kreshatek, so it is not a place we shop or frequent very often.  There are some good restaurants, however, and we took mom to one of our favorites.

Monday was John's (Pop Pop) birthday, and we took him to our very favorite restaurant, The Cave.  This restaurant is within walking distance from our apartment and it is a regular place for KIS staff.  They specialize in Georgian (that would be the country, not the state!) food and have the absolute best chicken "shashlik" on the planet.  This is a grilled marinated chicken that about melts in your mouth.  Combined with grilled vegetables, hummus, babaganoush  (eggplant dip), and pita type bread, it is a culinary experience.

Ken and I had made arrangements with a Ukrainian teacher at our school to be our tour guide for a couple of days.  She planned two days of site seeing.  The first day we went to Independence Square and multiple cathedrals.  It was a day of walking and we were pretty beat by the end of it.  Here are some photos from that day:

 Independence Square

A statue of the brothers and sister who founded Kyiv

In front of St. Sophia's Cathedral

Government building

St. Michael's Cathedral

Statue of the Apostle James (I believe)

St. Michael's

A view from St. Michael's toward St. Sophia's - seen through the middle of the statue.

St. Andrew's Cathedral - closed for renovation

We had hoped to visit and walk down Andrevsky Street, a popular touristy shopping street.  However, with the EuroCup 2012 looming, the street was torn up in renovations.  So instead of walking down the street, we rode the funicular (see below).  The funicular took us close to the Dnipro River. 

 Funicular

After we had lunch at a restaurant called Pazata Hata - a Ukrainian buffet, we went to the Chernobyl Museum.  Not many people realize that the Chernobyl disaster occurred only about 60 KM north of Kiev, and it has significantly impacted Ukraine for years.

Wednesday was Angela's 16th birthday and we celebrated the day at a place called DreamTown - a huge mall with shopping, food, and fun.  There is an ice rink, a skating rink, bumper cars, a movie theater, an aqua park, curling, and a huge arcade area.  Angela had two friends with her, Renee and Katja, and the highlight of the day was that Renee got her ears pierced for the first time and Angela got her ear cartilage pierced.  You will have to ask her about how they did it.  That is a story only she can tell.

On Thursday, Olga was our tour guide again.  Fortunately the day was gorgeous!  We began our tour at the Famine Museum.  This represents Ukraine's version of Holodomor, what they consider to be a man-made famine by Joseph Stalin to assert control over Ukrainian nationalism.  To learn more about this event of the 1930s, read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor.  The museum was very interesting.

View of the Dnipro River

Statue representing the Great Famine of 1932

After the museum we walked to The Lavra, the largest monastery in Ukraine.  This is a very old campus originally built by monks and improved upon by the Ukrainian Orthodox church.  As we were in the week leading up to Orthodox Easter, many special events were taking place at Lavra and we got to go inside several of the cathedrals and browse through some stands set up.  We also went to a miniature museum and met the artist of these miniatures.

Entrance to Lavra

Lavra's view of the Dnipro

This is the southern part of the huge Lavra campus.

In the lower right you can see a priest who just left one of the monasteries

This is part of a giant egg sculpture made with individual eggs.  In Ukraine, hand painting eggs is a specialty called Pisanki.  These are beautiful Easter colors, but Pisanki can be found throughout the year.

When you enter a cathedral, you have to cover your head.

An egg made of roses.

Olga, our tour guide and friend

Mom and John were able to meet many of our friends, although most had left for their own holidays.  We did have Easter lunch with a great group of people, so we did celebrate Easter.  We also watched the people of Kiev celebrate Orthodox Easter.  Each family buys a basket, makes a special bread, and has the bread blessed by a priest.  We watched as family after family went to a local cathedral near us and then went to the park and enjoyed a picnic.

We enjoyed our last few days with Grandma Shirley and Pop Pop before they headed home.  I am hoping that other people can come and visit so we can show them the sites as well.

SUN Finally Found! In Turkey!!

Well, really we were not so desperate for sun in the middle of February, but it was nice to enjoy the mild climate of the Mediterranean after the brutally cold winter of Ukraine.  We arrived in Antalya, Turkey in the evening and easily made our way by taxi to our beautiful hotel in the old town area.  Compared to Kiev, Antalya seemed much more modern with large well-maintained roads and a higher level of cleanliness.  Our hotel, the Mediterra Art Hotel is a small "boutique" hotel with about 15 rooms.  Breakfast is served and during the seasons other than winter there is an open swimming pool.   The hotel was extremely comfortable and the hotel staff were fabulous. Best was the location though.

Okay, enough of sounding like a travel agent - can you tell I've been filling out travel recommendation pages for Booking.com and TripAdvisor.com! Anyway, it was a good choice for a hotel.

We spent the next six days exploring the city and beyond.  We walked, rode the city buses and trams, and took a tour out to the ruins of Perge, Aspendos, and Side.  The people were incredibly friendly.  Turkey is a mostly Muslim country, and the call to prayer could be heard five times a day.  However, it is acceptable during prayer time to continue about your business if you are not Muslim.  Hearing the call to prayer was a friendly reminder of my time in Saudi Arabia, and I still find the sing-song voice of the caller beautiful.

Our first day we explored the Old Town and beyond on foot.

Narrow cobblestone streets make up Old Town Kaleici

 The beautiful harbor

View of the Mediterranean Sea

 Notice the fortress in the background.  The city of Antalya has been under many rulers throughout the centuries including Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Seljuk Turks, and the Ottoman.  The fortress and surrounding city walls were built in the 2nd century BC when a Pergamon (Greek) king ordered his soldiers to find "heaven on earth" and they discovered the Antalya region.  The king, King Attalos II, named the city Attaleia which later was changed to Antalya

The City Clock Tower is center.  Note the mosque and minaret in the background on the right.

 Hadrian's Gate built in honor of the Roman Emperor Hadrian in 130 AD

Of interest, Paul of Tarsus (Paul in the Bible) visited Antalya in the second century with Barnabas as recorded in the book of Acts. "From Perga, Paul and Barnabas went down to Attalia and sailed from there to Antioch after preaching in Pisidia and Pamphylia" (Acts 14:25-26).

A Turkish attempt at McDonald's??  This food was better.

There were some very old and very detailed wooden doors throughout the old town.

Our second day we decided to hop on a city bus to the Upper Duden Waterfalls.  We really didn't know what to expect, but what we found was amazing.  Water played an important part in much of our history learning about the Antalya area - how water was transported by the Greeks and Romans thousands of years ago to how the City of Antalya currently uses the water and waterfalls as a local resource.  It was a great day, especially when you throw in a camel ride!

Our next day in Turkey was ancient ruin tour day.  We visited Perge, Aspendos, and Side - sites that reflected mostly Roman development, although some Greek as well.  Along the way we stopped for a nice lunch at a Turkish restaurant on a filthy dirty river.  Turns out they had had massive rains and flooding two weeks before and there was still a lot of silt in the river.  Our tour guide was very good and had great information about the area and living in Antalya.  We met several people on the trip including a husband and wife from India and Pakistan who live in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.  They were also staying at our hotel and we had several opportunities to talk about Saudi.  The husband has been to Jubail recently and it was fun to hear his impression of it and for him to hear my 30+ year old memories.

Perge

Water transportation canal - Roman style

Side - a beautiful site, but unfortunately very little is left and has been taken over by shops and restaurants

Lunch along the river

Everywhere we went - even in the middle of nowhere - people trying to sell us trinkets.

Aspendos

Greco-Roman Colliseum.  Absolutely amazing, and the acoustics were still incredible.

Just imagine what these rocks have seen!  Performances and battles between beast and man.

These are the lower Duden waterfalls - our last stop on the tour.  This is where the water flows from the falls we went to the previous day.  Powerful.

To round out our budding knowledge of the history of Antalya, we spent part of the next day at the Archaeological Museum of Antalya which contains over 80% of the dig findings from Perge and Side.  Some of the more impressive pieces have found their way legally and illegally to other countries.  Like the Greeks in their quest to bring the Elgon Marble Parthenon Friezes back to Greece from England, the Turks continue to try to get pieces from the United States and other countries as well.  

The museum was full of coins, pottery, and other small bits found in digs.  However, most impressive were the marble statues and the sarcophagi.  Wow!

Great teaching tool - a visual archaeological timeline.  It definitely helped our brains "see" where what we saw at the three sites we went to fit into history.

One of the adventures I like to have in any new city is to find an open air market.  We had our choice of one every day of the week, so we went to one after the museum.  Antalya has excellent public transportation and for a very reasonable price we rode the old tram to the city center and then the new tram for a kilometer or so.  We knew we were in the right place because we saw no tourists and a lot of locals carrying bags of produce.  The market was the size of a football field, held in a multi-story parking garage.  The produce, nuts spices, and fish were on the first level.  We think clothing was on the second level, but we never ventured up.  It was noisy with people crying out their wares, and it was crowded.  We purchases some nuts and way more honeycomb than we really wanted (kind of hard to get understood with sign language), but my favorite was the fish market which reminded me of Pike Place in Seattle with people tossing fish back and forth and everyone generally having a great time.  Made me wonder which came first?!

The new tram

Afternoon Baklava at the 24-hour bakery next to the hotel

This is probably the best story of the trip.  We only went into a few souvenir-ish type shops while in Antalya.  We spent a bit of money at one of the shops on plates and backgammon sets.  The first time we were there, the owner of the shop, Aaron, suggested an excellent place to eat.  We went back a couple of days later because Angela wanted something, and Aaron suggested another restaurant, one more for the locals.  He then offered to drive us there, so we invited him for dinner.  The food was excellent and we learned about Aaron and a lot about Turkey.

Old tram

Old tram

As our last activity before heading back to Kiev, we took a boat tour on the Mediterranean.  It was a beautiful day and we enjoyed the ride and soaked up the sun.

Castle Turret

Our last evening we spent at The Castle - an excellent restaurant recommended by friends in Kiev.  It was our second time there because it was a definite need-to-repeat experience.  Unlike the first time when we sat inside, we sat out on the patio enjoying the Mediterranean evening.  The owner wrapped us in blankets to keep us warm as the cool set in.

Seafood Fettucini - this (among many other things) is why I gained weight on this trip!

Angela's chicken shashlik platter

While Kiev has stray dogs everywhere, Antalya has stray cats.  I was befriended at The Castle.  He was so enjoying the warm lap, that he actually growled when I had to put him down to leave.

And so, we are back in Kiev.  It is now March 10 - this blog has taken me awhile to get out.  We still have a significant amount of snow on the ground with the promise (or threat) of another snow storm at the beginning of next week.  I'm one of the track coaches and we had planned on starting track mid March.  I don't think that will be happening!  Even though I joked about finally finding sun in Turkey, Ken, Angela, and I have really enjoyed the winter experience and none of us are sorry that there is still snow on the ground.

For inquiring minds, our summer travel dates:

All - Atlanta June 25 - June 29

Ken and Angela - East Coast trip June 29 - July 14

Kim - San Francisco Bay Area June 29 - July 8

Kim - Seattle July 8 - July 14

All - Chino, California July 15 - July 18

All- Santa Cruz July 19 - July 24/25

All - SF Bay Area - July 25 - August 1

All - Pentwater, Michigan - August 1 - August 14

Hope to see you!  Take care and we'll talk soon!

Kim, Ken, and Angela