"You are entering a whole different world"

These were the words spoken by the driver who met me at Kiev airport upon hearing that this was my first time in Ukraine.  While the forboding tone put me off a bit, I was already getting such a feeling after going through one of the most chaotic immigration processes yet (7 lines, no direction, and many scary men with large guns in camo).   Driving the road into the city, I was not very impressed by the surroundings....desolate houses, gray sky, and an overall gloom over the area.   Not much improvement as we arrived at the hotel....nice place, but the surrounding "down town" Kiev was a grey, dreary place that was not inviting.

My co-worker dragged me out for dinner, and we walked the short way towards the main street of the city centre.  Here is where we started to go wrong.  We based our flightplan off the directions my taxi driver had given me ("See the building with the MTC on top?  Go there, then turn right").  Wladek had a map, however when we attempted to match up the Metro station in front of the TGI Fridays (yup...seriously...it was written in Ukrainian, but there was no doubting it), we realized that a) the map was in Latin alphabet --aka"translated" Ukrainian, b) the street signs were in Cyrilliac-based alphabet and c) we had no idea where we were.  Well....it seemed that most of the cars were coming from THAT direction, and logic says that at the end of the day, most cars leave the city centre.....so we went THAT direction.   Luckily, our faulty logic paid off, and we ended up on the main shopping street in Kiev.  Here, the buildings were obviously constructed during the post WWII communist period, with the box shape dotted with equally spaced, uniform windows in rigid grids.   But instead of the dish-water gray of the outer city, here the buildings were painted in welcoming pastels.  What struck me the most was that seemed to be a basement invasion of capitalism in these otherwise severe buildings, as we passed shop fronts of Tiffany's, Bvlgari, Dolce &Gabbana.  It was like the city was struggling with a new identity.

We strolled the streets a bit longer, going from a dreary stone alley to a colorful tree-lined avenue in a single turn.  Finally, we popped into a grill for dinner and enjoyed a nice light salad with a crisp glass of wine.  Not "typical" Ukrainian cuisine, but I am sure that will come in the coming days, as we leave Kiev tomorrow for Dnipropetrovsk.

Now THAT's a Pub Crawl!

Its a little hard to plan a party from across an ocean, so I decided that this year, the celebration of James' birthday would have to be a smaller affair then the shindig thrown for his 30th.   So......as James walked thru the International Arrivals area at 7am on Friday morning, he was greeted with SURPRISE...we're spending the weekend in Ireland!!!!   That's right, he had 24hrs to get over jet lag, as we were headed to Dublin first thing Sat morning with one goal.....enjoy some Guinness!

We dropped our bags at the hotel, hopped a bus, and headed straight to St. James Gate and the Guinness Storehouse.  I have been to quite a few breweries in my time, but I was duly impressed with the Storehouse.   Standing in the world's largest pint glass, the first thing you see is the original lease signed by Arthur Guinness.  We made our way up the glass to the Gravity Bar, to enjoy the best pint of Black Gold ever tasted.

As most of you know, James and I are frequent partakers in a world-wide scavenger hunt known as Geocaching.   For our activities on Sunday, I had found a 22 stage geocache which required us to do possibly the worlds longest pub crawl.  At  each stage, we used longitude and latitude coordinates to direct us to the location of a pub in Dublin, where we would answer a question.  At the end, we would use the answers to help us find the coordinates of the last stage, a 23rd "bonus" pub.  So at 11 am, we embarked on our mission to see 23 of the most historic, eccentric or traditional pubs in the area.  As we were not in college anymore, we choose not to partake at every stop, but instead pick those which we found the most interesting.   Our first pint was at the Palace Bar, whose dark, wooden interior was full of little booths and hidden tables was the ultimate in what an Irish pub should be.   Before we knew it, we had spent 45 mins listening to the locals discussing rugby and football and other going-ons. 

Our journey continued and we were soon gently coerced by the promise of an Irish jig.  Settling in for another pint and some music, we were soon serenaded to the tune of Led Zepplin....hmmmm, not quite what we bargined for.  Alas, we made it through some more classic rock covers, and the occasional Christmas carol (only 76 shop lifting days until Christmas, folks!) before the duo launched back into a good ole-fashioned Irish drinking tune!  We left when the group took a break, and headed thru more of Temple Bar, in and out of some great pubs and quite a few more pints (and even an Irish coffee!).  Stop #15 was at the Stag's Head, which boasted a 99 year-old mount overlooking the bar.  The stag looks pretty good for its age, only missing one eye, that was swiped during a bachloer party last year.  At this point, I had switched to half-pints...still, an admirable effort.

By far our most nostalgic stop was at Neary's.  This was a favorite haunt of James' mom during her years in Dublin, so we lingered a bit longer there.  We enjoyed a pint, chatted with the barkeep, and watched the locals coming and going as the afternoon wore on.  Our journey finally ended at the Dawson Lounge.  With its tiny red door, and sign boasting the smallest pub in Dublin, we were rewarded by following a narrow staircase below the street to a tiny, cozy basement pub.   What a great find, and an awesome end to a perfect day!!!

We were off the next day, so after some visits to more gardens and a few cathedrals, we shared a last pint, and headed back to reality.

Happy Birthday James!!!!