On December 20th of 2006, I received an e-mail from my dad. It contained this Powerpoint file. The forwarding messages all included such phrases as: “I CANT EVEN LOOK AT THE PICTURES WITHOUT GETTING DIZZY!!” […]
Picture yourself looking up at a blue sky peeking through a huge canopy of leaves on a perfectly clear day in Kyoto. As the faint sound of Japanese flutes recedes softly into the background, it’s […]
Peder and I left our pousada in Trancoso and started out for our day’s 30 km walk at around 11am. The plan was to follow the coast all the way to Arraial d’Ajuda, a neighboring […]
Warning This post contains some graphic images. If blood makes you queasy, you may want to skip it. I’ve mentioned a few times how, although I do travel mostly without plans, I also do so […]
“They are an intriguing people. From the moment they wake, they devote themselves to the perfection of whatever they pursue. I have never seen such discipline.” -The Last Samurai. Seeing that fantastic archery demonstration the […]
The following is not actually a single narrative of one continuous evening, but a composite of many. It’s written as a representative summary of my average night out in Kyoto. Nothing is exaggerated. It’s Saturday […]
Every time Peder and I go out at night, we tell ourselves “Let’s get an early start so we can spend a couple hours strolling around before heading into a proper club.” But somehow the story always ends up the same. We don’t get out until after midnight and end up having so much fun meeting locals on the way that we skip the club entirely…or we find ourselves entering a totally unexpected venue at some ungodly late hour.
Friday night in Kiev was no exception.
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After Peder and I had our fill of climbing atop and photographing ourselves on oddly-painted soviet tanks and nukes, we hopped on the metro bound for Hydropark, a popular recreational area along the bank of the Dnipro river.
Like Ada Ciganlija in Belgrade, Hydropark offers wide variety of outdoor activities – bungee jumping, jet skiing, sandy beaches, waterslides, and countless riverfront bars and cafes and clubs.
However, we were heading there for something different.
A workout. A very, very strange workout.
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Despite how much we loved both the feeling and people of Kiev, Peder and I forced ourselves – in extremely rare fashion – to sacrifice a Thursday night out in favor of getting an early start Friday morning. Our destination would be the Lavra, Kiev’s “single most fascinating and extensive tourist site.”
“Set on 28 hectares of grassy hills above the Dnipro River, the monastery’s tight cluster of gold-domed churches is a feast for the eyes, the hoard of Scythian gold rivals that of the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, and the underground labyrinths lined with mummified monks are exotic and intriguing.”
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I think I’m finally starting to get the hang of Cyrillic…but I do have to admit, to a native English-speaker, it sure is one crazy alphabet.
First off, half of the letters are completely identical to Roman ones – yet pronounced completely differently. You have H but it’s pronounced like N, P is pronounced R, and У is pronounced oo. Then are the letters that look almost like a Roman letter – just a little strange, like they’re backwards or something. И is pronounced E, Й is pronounced Y, and Я is pronounced Ya.
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After our pleasant little introduction to Ukraine’s capital city, Peder and I set off on our first full day of sightseeing: a walking tour of as many must-see landmarks as we could cram into the second half of a day.
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