Trip to Cherkasy

On a sunny day in mid-September (OK, so I'm all out of order, but the posting is the point!) we took the girls down on a day trip to Cherkasy. It's a decent size city on the banks of the Dnipro river. I've been there for work a few times, as the Training Center for the State Border Guard Service is located there, but I hadn't had much time to see the town and the rest of the family hadn't seen it either. We arrived at lunch time and set up a picnic in a park near the river. G loved it, as you can see.While we were eating, the lawnmower came by to tidy the landscaping. He worked well, but took a lot of cigarette breaks.While G liked the picnic, someone else really enjoyed the beach. Being the off-season, and also being the state-maintained beach, it was a bit dirty, and obviously used as a drinking place/toilet. About 10 meters to the right of the picture there was a fence, and beyond that a nicely-maintained beachfront, so don't think that this section is the norm.We headed over to the private beach, and found a great playground. The best thing about having little kids is that they are entertained no matter where you go. Perhaps this is why our son doesn't join us on these trips - nothing too exciting to see. The other reason could be how cramped it is in our backseat with two car seats.

Anyway, here's our future pilot flying her airplane.And Miss S had a great time playing, and talking with the group of teenage boys, who had a few words of English, and were more than happy to test them out on us. I felt like a curiosity - they were fascinated that there were Russian/Ukrainian speaking tourists just hanging out at the playground in the off-season.