Day 3 Continued...

A lot happened after I posted yesterday's blog!  We typically go out in the morning, then back to the apartment to regroup/each lunch/rest, then out to the coffee shop to do all our wi-fi stuff, and then meet our friends for dinner.  It doesn't lend well to posting a daily blog :)  So- here's the rest of Sunday:

We attempted the Ukrainian buffet restaurant (right around the corner from TGI Fridays).  We got a TON of food for about $10.  We actually learned that it is more cafeteria-style than American all-you-can-eat buffets, but it was still pretty awesome to be able to point to what you wanted to try.  There were some descriptions in English, but not everything.

We tried some periogie-like dumpling things, 3 types, one stuffed with potatoes, one with a meat mixture, and one with cherries.  Everything is served with a dollop of sour cream and a butter sauce.  I also had some dry biscuit-thing (topped with sour cream), and a soup that I thought would be a hot potato like cream soup, but turned out to be a cold cucumber-dill soup with pieces of hot dog (?).  Bryan had a egg roll looking something that had that same meat mixture in it (topped with--- you guessed it!  Sour cream!), some scappoped potatoes, and what we thought was chicken Kiev, but turned out to be a breaded kind of ground chicken mixture with a potato inside of it.  Still good.  I'd stay away from the hot dog soup next time, though.

After dinner we explored the city some more on foot with the Moniers.  We went through a supermarket that is above the farmer's market downtown.  The supermarkets are small, with not a lot of aisle room, so I feel bad about taking my time trying to figure out what all the labels mean.  There are some awesome baked goods, as well as a good selection of yogurts, cheeses, milks, and of course, sour cream.  Also, every store we've gone into has an entire section devoted to chocolate.  This seems to be a big thing here...they take chocolate seriously.

We learned when you are in a market and want something in bulk, like individually wrapped chocolates or fresh fruit, you have to weigh them and get a sticker before you check out at the counter.  The cashier had to close her lane and walk back into the store to do this for us, while a line of people behind us became frustrated with us :)

*side note: we went into a high end market, like a fresh market maybe, and found these things:
1- soft cheese with truffles- approx. $30.
2- proscuitto, sliced fresh from giant cured pig legs hanging from the ceiling.
3- pints of Haagen-Daaz ice cream for approx. $15 each.
4- fresh fish, as in swimming in a tank and you pick out which one you want.
5- a huge selection of products from UK, which make it easier to understand labels, but they are more expensive.

You really can find pretty much anything you want in the markets, so I wouldn't worry too much about not being able to navigate the grocery stores.  Also, after they ring up our purchases, the cashier will show you on the register the money owed, so you don't even have to understand numbers spoken in Russian.