Locks of Love?

This is a very common tradition in the Ukraine.  They place a lock on the bridges after they get married.  It is difficult to see in the picture with Jeff, but there are literally hundreds of locks in the picture.  Jeff says that once they get a bridge all "filled up" then they come along and cut off all the locks so that more can be added.  What a wonderful tradition.

All aboard!

This was our return trip from Odessa.  A nine hour train ride.  We got a sleeping compartment that we shared with Jeff's parents.  These are his parents infront of us.

This is Jeff following me down the narrow hallway to our compartment.

This is Jeff in their with his mother.  This is not a bad idea.  If you must be on a train for so long, I guess this would be a good way to go.  The trip down was not bad for me other than my nights and days being messed up, but the trip back I started experiencing claustrophobia half way through the night.  We were on the top bunks (mine was on the left here and Jeff's is above his head while his parents had the bottom bunks).  I forgot that for me Claustrophobia gets worse when I am tired or run down.  I was more than ready to get off the train.  I am not even going to try to describe the bathrooms on these trains.  I will just share that I washed them completely before I  used them.

Another bird man

Do you recognize that fedora?  Yep, that is Grandpa Park.  He currently has a huge Eagle on his arm.  Yep, they have the same tourist traps here that we did in Kiev.  Remember our doves?  He got a real kick out of it.  He was at the top of the stairs of Odessa port.  These are literally about 14 flight of about 20-30 stairs a piece (or at least it felt that long).  These are pretty famous stairs although I never heard of them before we decided to come to Odessa.

This was a fun restaurant that had amazing food.  It sits on the beach of the Black Sea in Odessa.  We really enjoyed a delightful dinner with Jeff's parents and some friends of theirs.  This was suppose to be Christopher Columbus's ship.

This is me in "another sea".  So far I have been in the Dead, Red, and Med(itreanean) seas.  I have also been to both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.  I am afraid that those two are not all that glamorous, but I think the seas may make up for that!  It was chilly.  The weather was probably low 70's, the water was definitately colder than that.  Although after this summer, I have realized that I don't care to go to an (unheated) pool unless it is 100+ degrees or in July or August.  I am just not a cold water girl.

I can honestly say this was the funnest vacation.  It was a lovely opportunity for Jeff and I to relax and enjoy each other.  We got to spend a lot of time alone during the day and in the evenings we had the company of our parents (Park).  It was really lovely.

This is us at the ballet.  I am not really into the ballet, but thought we ought to give it a try since we were going to be in the Ukraine (AKA former Russia province).  It was great.  We got $6 tickets, but I thought our seats were wonderful.  Unfortunately jet lag was still getting me, so I slept through part of it.  It seems that whenever Malicifient came out, I fell asleep.  So I remember everything except her.

Architecture in Odessa

Odessa is on the shore of the Black Sea.  The story says that many years ago when Odessa was first being built up that the town gave land to anyone who would build of building of "interest".  So many of the buildings have fantastic architecture.  Unfortunately that was many years ago, and so we saw many building literally falling apart.  We were also able to discern some of the short cuts that were taken.  For example one building that we saw had dowels, 2x4's and paper to build up the stone looking edifice and then they put mortar on top.  Makes me think a bit of the facades that were famous through out the west in the United States.  The picture above is actually a cathedral.

This is the train station.  One might think it was just a judicious use of an old building, but rather it was designed like this and it's original purpose was as a train station.  I was amazed by how many statues, columns, pilasters, etc there were in these buildings.

No idea what this building is for, but I loved the color of it!  Even in this picture you just don't get how strong and beautiful the color of green was.  Amazing architectural decorations!

This is the side of the Opera house, the front is below.  Now one expects an opera house or cathedral to be this decorated.  You should see the inside, statues everywhere.  It actually made it difficult to get to our seats because a lot of people were posing on the stairs, etc to get pictures of this amazing place.  I guess I was tired of the crowd because I did not take a picture of the stairs or hallway.  Once we got in to our seats I did take a few pictures which I will show in the next post.

Independence Square - first half

Have you seen "Despicable Me"?  Our kids love to pretend they are holding up a building, etc in a picture that is in reality just a perspective twist on taking pictures.  Jeff is "holding" the sceptere looking statue that is in actuality about 1/4 mile away.  We took pictures like this thinking the kids would think they were hysterical.  

This is a street vendor looking to make some money off of us.  I did not know what he was doing with these birds.  He had one in his hand and the other was on the ground.  He stomped right by it and it hopped up on his outstretched hand.  Then the man walked over and put them on me (without my permission) and poked Jeff and told him to take a picture.  So yes, this is mostly my initial reaction.  I got a little use to it as the next picture shows.  Jeff got pushed into the picture and the man took our camera to take this picture.  I was a little hesitant and apprehensive trying to memorize what he looked like in case he ran away with our camera (not that we have an expensive camera at all).  Then after he gave our camera back he charged us about $8.  I laughed because I realized this was what he did all day, watched for people showing interest in his birds, dumping the birds on them, taking their pictures, and then charging them after the fact.  Not a bad Capitalistic gig. 

St Sophia's Greek Orthodox Church

This is a lovely picture I got of off a Google search.  It shows the really pretty color of the church.  When we first got there we just sat for about twenty minutes and relaxed.  This is the stop that made me realize how hard it is to travel in non-English speaking foreign lands.  Most of the time I have traveled (in Europe, Middle East, Africa) there have always been lots of English signs, English speakers, tour guides, etc.  This was the first time I went to a foreign country and had none of those to help me.  Jeff was with me so he was able to navigate us around quite a bit, but he speaks and reads Russian, not Ukrainian.  With the liberation of the Ukraine from Russia, there has been a bit of National Pride which has replaced a lot of the former Russian name plates, descriptions, menu's etc with Ukrainian.  

To enter the compound you have to go through the bell tower.  We finished our visit by climbing up the tower.  I knew it did not bode well when we started our trek up the tower through a hole in the wall.  It was not much larger than we are.  It caused me to wonder how people who were larger than Jeff and I would be able to make it into such places, however, now that I reflect on it I only recalled seeing two people who were overweight (by appearances) and at that nothing compared to what we see in the United States.  This may have to do with the amount of walking one must do in the Ukraine or it could do with the amount of support we give in the United States to make all places accessible to all people.

Now to the part I would prefer to avoid, but will share anyway.  First of all I have a slight claustrophobia which for the most part I dealt with just fine.  The bell tower brought out my acrophobia.  I was OK as long as I kept my self looking forward or at my feet.  If I looked over the side from the stairs, oh, it was not good.  I found at the second level up I was able to go up to fine.  It had a solid complete floor.  Then we had to go up about 3 more flights of stairs to the third level to which I basically clung to the walls (go ahead and start laughing now).  Jeff wanted to go to the top level, I told him to go for it, I wasn't going up anymore stairs.  I should have taken a picture of the stairs for you.  They looked like they were glued up, no iron beams, no walls, etc.  The were "caged in" so that you could not drop something off the side of the stairs.

These last two pictures are ours.  It really is a beautiful place to visit.