Year recap in pictures

Lions standing guard on Sumskaya street (psst... did you know they were a gift from the city of Lviv?)

While doing some tidying up on my computer, I discovered there are 5,790 unused pictures of Ukraine hanging out on this machine. And that's not even counting dropbox.

Yikes!

The good news is that I (re)discovered lots of cool pictures to share with you, like these adorable pictures of a dance taking place last October in Gorky Park, in an area named the Retro Park.

The dancers were mainly babushkas and dedushkas, bundled up against the chilly autumn air.

One woman was dancing solo with a blue fan, twirling too fast in her black dress for any of the older gentlemen to catch up. You'd imagine the DJ would be playing oldies for all this, but instead the music consisted of a lot of Verka Serduchka... :p which surprisingly seemed to be a major crowd pleaser! (Watch this video if you're not familiar with Verka Serduchka yet.)


That same day we took a cable cart ride through the park with D's parents. From this picture, I think we can all agree that fall is a glorious time of year here!

A day or two later, we ran into this talented group of musicians in Park Shevchenko.

don't see the video? click here

Then, as fall turned into winter, the sidewalks emptied. Gone were the street bands and passerby.

Those that did venture out were warmly-dressed.

Outside of trudging to work through the snow, we amused ourselves by doing things like finding monstrous icicles to sword fight with:

or indulging in colorful sushi-

yum,
yum,
yum
!!!








or wandering around in shopping malls-

Ave Plaza on Sumskaya street

and of course, following in the footsteps of many others by putting a "love lock" on this pedestrian bridge and throwing away the key-

don't see the video? click here

Around this time, D and his coworkers took a bus out of the city to watch a historical reenactment of a WWII battle. It looks like people had a pretty good time getting to interact with the soliders-

 WWII reenactment video

Picture time with a Czech soldier (er, at least I think he's Czech). They're shouting "I love Otakar Jaroš!"

Then the snow was gone and spring was back, meaning cat alley was full of yowling cats and playful clumps of tiny kittens.

although this kitten looks rather sad

These kittens all belong to what I call the Cat Mafia. More on that another time.

In late spring my brother came to visit (hooray!!) and we had a blast showing him around the city, including a stop for dinner at downtown's Шато.

And back to the cats; you-know-who had a birthday! : )

He still acts more like a cranky 95-year-old grandfather than a 15-month-old cat though :p

Kит video

And then spring blossomed into summer and here we are now.

Pushkin street

Daffy shopping mall

Freedom Square

Phew! 22 pictures down, only 5,768 to go!


How has your year been so far? Have you gotten to travel to any cool places or see any unusual sights?