However, that only got us as far as the actual town, which is about 2 hours southeast of Kyiv, on the banks of the Dnipro River. So these pictures are from our first pit stop, at the Kaniv Football (Soccer) Club grounds, where we had a picnic and fed the kids, since it was already close to 2 PM. Here is the football field/pitch. 
Little G loves her a good picnic, especially when surrounded by empty beer bottles and cigarette butts!
The beauty of having small children is that they really don't care where you take them or what you do. (Reinforcing this point is the absence of M on many of our trips, although in this case he was in the States at Kooch I Ching.) So they loved the decrepit football grounds, since they had playtime/training equipment. Much of it was broken, but it is the same stuff that we have in the park across the road from our apartment. So we played for an hour, and simultaneously got our exercise!
Once refreshed, we began the process of driving around asking for directions and trying to find our ultimate goal. We were distracted along the way when we located the (obligatory in this part of the world) WWII memorial. Figuring it was a great opportunity for S to work off some energy and run around, we got out of the car. There was a wedding going on, so S got to see a polyester-meringue-clad bride, which made her day. She also saw a Lenin statue, which had less of an impression on all of us.Little G loves her a good picnic, especially when surrounded by empty beer bottles and cigarette butts!The beauty of having small children is that they really don't care where you take them or what you do. (Reinforcing this point is the absence of M on many of our trips, although in this case he was in the States at Kooch I Ching.) So they loved the decrepit football grounds, since they had playtime/training equipment. Much of it was broken, but it is the same stuff that we have in the park across the road from our apartment. So we played for an hour, and simultaneously got our exercise!
Here is the mother with child at the WWII Memorial. As you reached her, there was a great view of the river and less nice view of parts of the city.
S is reading out the names of those from the region who died in the war. Ukraine lost the largest percentage of its population of any country during the war, a fact that is often forgotten, or wrapped up in the Soviet statistics. Even little Kaniv, a medium-sized town, had a few hundred names, and many times the same last names in a row, signifying brothers and fathers dying together. It is really a sad legacy and much closer to the Ukrainian psyche now than WWII is in the U.S.
You can see us walking back to the car past the flowerbed.
And it started to sprinkle. Unfortunately, our umbrella carrier was a bit short, so those of us over three feet tall got wet. But she was happy...
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