All our English- speaking Ukrainian friends refer to going for a rest, not a holiday or vacation. So while we have internet (and I have caught up on all the posts I promised you last week) here's our trip so far...
It’s a great time to have my jet lag insomnia- I think I woke up around 11 pm with a pressing problem- easily solved back in Nikolipolia with a trip to the bathroom. However we are not in our house in the village, since Maxim came back by lunch time today and Garry decided to pack up for his planned trip to the sea- as soon as I finished freezing the corn he picked while getting some for lunch- he got all that was ready- so I put 6-7 bags in the freezer along with what the four of us (Max, his brother Andrei , Garry and I) ate corn on the cob to go with the meat patties, tomato gravy and potatoes I made while cutting up peppers to freeze.
Anyway I am sitting on a bed typing away- after solving my bladder problem about an hour ago. I am hoping the bugs I squashed came in the lace covered window Garry opened for air before we went to sleep after watching a TV show on my computer, and are not regulars with friends in this room! it has a double and a single bed (where I am now sitting) a hook on the door and toilet/outhouse about fifty feet from here in the dark. The room was rented to us by a baba that Garry talked to at her gate with a sign that we think said rooms to rent.
One of the two ladies showed us the way to walk to the beach ( she even knows a little English) and seemed to say that the tide comes in quickly… and the water has lots of clay in right now- very good for you (like a mud bath Garry guessed.) The tide was low when we got here around sunset. I think I heard it come in around midnight; it had been really quiet just Garry snoring and the chirping of insects , the occasional sounds of a car driving though the village, dog barking, or geese honking, when I heard a sound for about 15 minutes I realized was the sound of waves crashing on the beach. It returned to extreme quiet before I got up to type.
We drove to Melitopol late this afternoon and then headed to find the Sea of Azov and ended up in this village- I am not even sure what it is called! Travelling some skinny paved roads with the occasional pot hole to watch out for (Garry just had one of the back tires fixed on the car this morning- it had four nails in it!) The two villages before this one the cows were heading home as the end of daylight grew near, along with a flock of white geese being herded along the road. There were many fires burning away as people in villages across Ukraine are cleaning up their yards and gardens with school starting on September 1st- tomorrow. Fall is around the corner; as the rising smoke and my need for sinus meds can attest.
We had brought the tent that we bought for Maxim when he went to church camp in Crimea last year, along with his air mattress and pump, but it had been raining a bit when we finally got to the sea- it is normal for people to pitch tents along the shore in some spots, but with the rain and dusk falling, Garry decided to try the other Ukrainian way when by the sea and sure enough there were rooms to rent. Garry told the lady one night- she kept trying to convince him to stay for two (and offered tea, coffee, eggs- when he asked if there was a magazine (store) apparently it was closed) but he plans to head to Feodosia Thursday as we have not been there yet.
We took a morning walk before leaving- check out the seashell graffitti with names of cities- like Zaporisia
Contrast once again as we checked into a lovely resort type hotel Alie Paroosa- the name apparently means scarlet sails; the bathroom even has a bidet. There’s free wi-fi to upload the blog although they changed the password last night and I must have misunderstood his English- I couldn’t get it to work to put up this blog post. But today is a new day- we decided on a second night here, there’s a breakfast spread downstairs (lunch was also included when we checked in- too bad we had already eaten down by the train station where we found the remains of an old tower in the park- the plaque said it dated to the 14th century – likey Genoese, as they had a network of forts in Crimean ports. Its in the photo- not the hotel!
Last night we walked the tourist strand along the shore and returned to hotel around 8 pm; it was a beautiful evening and we sat at one of the tables near the pool and tried an appetizer (after 2 lunches we didn’t eat dinner) of “black sea herring marinated in spices served with crimean onions and baked potato fingers.” Garry says he never ate pickled herring he like before but this was delicious (we decided where would we eat something like that again! - when deciding between it and a dessert on the English menu she found for us)) I picked the bones out of my herring and fed them to a couple stray three colored cats that had been sneak through the tables looking for snacks, one had gotten really close to our table, no doubt she was smelling the fish! There was live music to go with our snack- a woman playing violin, mostly old pop and show songs. One of the ladies got up to dance with her little son in front of the bandstand and got a polka for an encore. The crowd was thin as school started in Ukraine yesterday September first.
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