Day 11 Continued

Every day is a new adventure here :)

After the orphanage and our almost-daily trip to McDonald's to suck up their wi-fi, we walked around and explored another grocery store that we had seen on Sunday as we walked back from the Metro station.  Turns out that the store is closer to us than Billa is, and has a second floor with household items- it's like a Ukrainian Walmart.

Pointers for the grocery store:

• If you go in with a backpack or other bag (we wear our backpack everywhere we go), then you need to lock it in a locker before you enter the store.  There are walls of lockers located as soon as you go through the front doors, and you just put your bag in, and take the key to your locker.  Some stores have a person behind a counter that will check your bag in, and then  give you a plastic marker with a number on it for you to get it back.  It doesn't cost anything, but you MUST do it.
• Bring your own bag to take your things home, and then take your groceries after you check out to a  little table just past the cashiers, where you can put them in your own bags before you leave.

We also went to a shoe store (Plato's), which was quite large and pretty fun to walk around in.   Everyone has awesome shoes here, not that I can walk in any of them, but it's good times to look at them :)  They had a good selection of kids' shoes, but we couldn't really find what we were looking for, so we went next door to a children's store to look there.

The children's store had everything- shoes, clothes, strollers, toys, etc.  Like a Babies-r-Us.  We found super cute sneakers for Danila for about $20 (I had brought a couple pairs of shoes for him from home, but his feet are bigger than I thought they'd be!  Actually, it turns out that he and Chase are the exact same size.)  The thing that I love best about baby gear here are the mac-daddy strollers that they have here.  They are all very pricey, but are all the awesome Euro-type strollers that I drool over at home.  It's a good thing that we won't have any more infants at our house, otherwise I'd have to beg Bryan for an awesome stroller...

We dropped all our goodies at the apartment and then headed out to try the Metro on our own.  Bryan wanted to find the Rotary Club here (he's a member of the Ballantyne Rotary) so he could connect with some business men here.  So, just because Bryan is amazing, we made it from our station, changed trains, and then got off at the correct stop in dowtown!!  I'd show you pictures of the Metro, but apparently you aren't allowed to take them, because a police officer stopped me and asked me to erase them.  We still don't exactly know why you can't...?

Unfortunately, after searching high and low for the meeting place, and asking 5 different people if they knew the address we were trying to find, we thing that the information on the website was outdated because we could not find any Rotary Clubs anywhere.  Boo.

We needed dinner, and we had passed by an Irish pub called Patrick's (it's by the Opera house) a while ago, so we tried to find it again for some drinks and pub food.  Thankfully, we found it- and BONUS, they had great wi-fi AND an English menu.  Our waitress spoke limited English, but we managed to order beer and wine.  I was trying to order one glass of wine, but she kept pointing to the menu and showing me 4 fingers.  Did that mean I had to get 4 glasses?  I have no idea.  

Funny language barrier story:

After we ordered drinks, we decided that we wanted an order of onion rings and some Irish stew with bread.  So, we point to the onion rings on the appetizer menu, and tell her that we want one order.  But she shakes her head, and points instead to something called "chef's snacks".  I guess that either 1- the onion rings are bad, 2- they are out of onion rings, or 3- the 'chef's snacks' are really really good.  So we ordered them.

Turns out it is a small plate of some kind of jerky.  I think.  Um, ok.  They were pretty good, but not really what we were craving!

We finish our 'snacks' and try to order the stew, and when we pointed to the stew on the menu...but she shakes her head again!  So we point to something else, and again, shaking of the head!  She points to the salad menu...which was eh, not so much what we wanted... Again, maybe 1-the hot entrees are not good, 2-the are out of hot food, or 3-the salads are very good...?  LOL.  We just asked for the check after that.

At least we got a little to eat, and had time and a good connection to Skype with the boys and Bryan's brother :)

We stopped at the Ukrainian fast food restaurant before heading home- I can't remember the first part of the name, but the second part is Xata.  It is a chain restaurant, cafeteria style, the same as the one that we went to in K*.  Tonight I tried the mushrooms in sour cream sauce with onions over rice and potatoes.  Delish (and cheap).

Good night to all!