Last Day In Kiev

We started today with the classic city bus tour.  I've never done one of these in any city before, I guess they seemed too touristy, but that is what we are after all so why not.  We actually got to learn about so many of the statues and buildings and monuments that we have been seeing on all our trips to Ukraine, in English!  Justin and I thought it was great, you can see how much our tired little guys enjoyed it:

You may assume they were bored but actually Ethan seemed to like it while he was awake, he is the little intellectual in the family so this kind of thing interests him, and also tends to lead to lots of questions.  Today it was about WWII, after being in France and now here he's starting to catch on to how it got the name World War.  So not bored, just exhausted from so much vacation.  Thus the bus tour was perfect for today.

We saw all kinds of cool places like these:

The Taras Shevchenko University, which is apparently highly criticized for being painted red and black instead of the classic Kiev bright pastels.  While it might fit in best at home it certainly stands out here. 

The national opera house.

Not the most beautiful but perhsps the most interesting is this, the world's deepest subway stop.  It takes 10 minutes by escalator to get down into it, no thank you!  And they say it is quite beautiful inside, really. 

The Motherland statue.  This picture can't even begin to describe how huge she is, one of the largest statues in the world.  It's unvelievable and a bit scary to see her looming over the city.  Ukraine is definitely not short on huge statues. 

And finally this famous spot... Ok, not really but the bus did go by it and it is our favorite spot in Kiev.  This is the apartment building we stayed in with Jax when we were waiting to bring him home, 8 years ago.  Ukraine was in the middle of a revolution which impacted us in many ways -- delayed the processing of our paperwork, knocked out the power in our apartment building for days (that made for some interesting moments!), and kept us out of Independence Square due to protestors.  We were too blinded by the joy of being with our baby boy to care too much anyway, but it was memorable and how many Americans can say they've experienced a revolution first hand?  But the most memorable were those first days with Jax, watching him sleep, teaching him how to eat, trying not to drop our slippery baby in a dark shower (they do not cover the same things in adoption class as they do in childbirth class, wet slippery babies would have been helpful!).  He was so sweet and so hungry, some things haven't changed :). But enough of that trip down memory lane... 

Here's Independence Square today.

It was really fun to experience it on a Saturday evening, full of street performers, music, kind of like a big party.  And though it seems quite rare to see kids out on the streets of Kiev (we would be a novelty even if we weren't speaking English), there is no shortage of knock off Disney characters roaming around ready for a photo, quite bazaar.

After the bus tour we hoofed it to the Friendship of the People's Monument:

Here are Ethan and Jax standing under the arch striking the statue pose, though Ethan felt it was not authentic enough because Jax did not take off his shirt to expose his 6 pack like the guy in the statue, ha.

Finally we were off to our final sight, another huge statue (though a dwarf compared to the Motherland statue), this one is of Prince Vladimir.  He was the one who brought Christianity to Ukraine.  Jax loved that he had his name.  The statue was so big and they were doing work around it so I couldnt get a great picture, but here's one from below and one from above. He's holding a cross, not a weapon like so many statues, though you can't see it in the picture. 

See him back there through the trees? Prince Vladimir really has a spectacular view of the Dniper River and city beyond. As we were looking out at it Katya yelled,  "I see the Eiffel Tower".  It was actually just a smoke stack, the real Eiffel Tower must have had a big impact on her, huh. 

We learned on our tour that the people of Kiev are very proud and like to brag about how only the most fit people can live here because you have to climb mountains (their word, really hills) as you walk the city.  I'd like to add our names to the list of braggers.  Remember the funicular that took us up the mountain yesterday, well today we walked up -- halfway (Prince Vladimir is half way down it).  Look at little Cullen go.  The lack of perspective in this picture makes me look like a liar but honestly, it was really steep.

So we finished our last day in Kiev at none other than TGI Fridays, crazy!  Somehow it felt wrong eating there, until we sat down and could read everything on the menu and we saw the kids gobble down every bite of some good ol' American food. 

Now to packing, we have made ourselves quite at home in Kiev and spread our toys over every inch of this apartment, enjoying having the space to spread.  But tomorrow we leave at 6am for Kherson, the final leg of our adventure.