Chernigiv

On Sunday we took a little day trip to Chernigiv. It's about an hour and 45 minutes away. Luckily Keenan fell asleep shortly after we left Kyiv so it was a very peaceful drive. Keenan does OK in his carseat for a little while then he needs to be bribed with raisins or some other snack. It was nice to once again get out of Kyiv and look at some of the country side. We saw lots of corn fields, sunflower field and a few wheat fields. It is very green here with lots of big trees. Peaking out of the trees across a field we could see just the golden domes of a church. We thought that it looked neat.
Just for my dad we took a few pictures of the tractors we saw.

We drove through quite a few really small towns on the way. Lots of people selling little bits of produce on the side of the road. On the way back we stopped to buy some potatoes from three younger girls. There was a little bit of a language barrier, everytime I tried tell them what I wanted the three girls would start giggling. I wanted only a few potatoes, they were trying to sell me a huge bucket of them. Finally I took what potatoes I wanted, put them into a sack and overpaid them. When they saw the money (only about $2 USD) their eyes got big and they once again tried putting more potatoes in my sack. They were only selling the big bucket of potatoes for about $6 but I did NOT want that many potatoes! "Nyet" I said and took off. Geeesh! Can't a person just get a few potatoes?

Here's the sign for the city of "Chernigiv" and the first church you see coming into town. We saw quite a few churches, many had the golden domes.

You might be wondering why I would take a picture of a stop sign... because it's in ENGLISH! We thought that it was kind of odd since almost none of the other signs were in English.

We first drove by the docks on the river and saw some pretty old boats. It looked to be a graveyard for retired boats.
Unfortunately as soon as we got into town and parke we realized that the fancy camera that Eric had borrowed was out of batteries. No worries I brought the other camera. It too was flashing the low battery symbol. Drat! We were able to squeeze a few pictures out. We walked around a large park that had a few churches, lots of people hanging out drinking beer (they treat beer like soda here) and the edge was lined with cannons. Not sure if they were there for looks or if they once protected the city.
Keenan had fun running around the park, mostly finding any patch of dirt that he could cover himself with. The kid loves dirt! He loves to be covered in it.
We really didn't do much in Chernigiv but eat and walk around. As soon as Keenan started acting tired we strapped him back into his carseat and headed home.