We started out at T.G.I Fridays (copycats) at about 11:30 for a birthday lunch. Two of our friends are celebrating their birthdays and one friend is celebrating her half birthday this week.
The birthday girls
T.G.I Fridays hahaha
I'll just leave this picture here for you all to drool over.
Our final bill was 1209r = $150 for 10 people. Not too shabby.
The BEST part of going to Fridays happened right when we got there. After setting our stuff down at the table, Audrey and I headed to find the bathrooms to wash our hands and we were walking behind another lady and she asked a waiter where the bathroom was and we just kind of followed her while she babbled to us in Russian. Audrey finally told her that she only speaks a little Russian and the lady kind of waved it off and kept talking to us. Then when I was standing next to her at the sinks she was like, "You speak English?" and I was like, "Yeah!", and she was like, "Und Deutsch?" and I'm thinking 'hahah, she just asked me if I spoke German, in German. Wait- she just spoke to me in German, I SPEAK GERMAN! HOLY CRAP.' And then we all had a 5 minute conversation in German, in an American restaurant, in the middle of Ukraine. IT WAS AMAZING and it basically made not only my week, but my month.
And then the rest of the weekend happened and now it's Sunday.
Haha, just kidding... After we left Fridays we headed over to St. Sophia's Cathedral with our coordinator, Tanya, and a few more girls that joined our group along the way. St. Sophia's is over 1000 years old and it still has the original paintings and mosaics inside. It’s not an acting church anymore, it’s just a museum, but it was still very beautiful and cool to learn about.
So, a little church history:
Remember this guy?
His name was Yaroslav the Wise and this statue is sitting outside the gate to the city that we saw on our first tour around the city 3 weeks ago. The statue has him holding St. Sopias Cathedral.
Anyway, he built it. It's surrounded by a courtyard and a fence and you have to pay to get in. The entrance is through the bell tower, which I had a picture of also from our first tour:
the bell tower
the actual cathedral was right behind it
After we walked around inside we went back outside and headed up the bell tower. Now, do you remember me saying that the winter weather had arrived this weekend? Well, it arrived with wind, snow, and a toasty temp of 15° F. Definitely a difference from the 40° we had earlier this week. The first half of the climb up was inside of the structure. Inside as in 'surrounded by walls'. The only thing we had to worry about was hitting our heads on the seriously low ceiling. The second part of the climb was a little more interesting.
First of all, those big holes on the side made an awesome path for wind to blow through. Creepy wind sounds are not what I want to hear while climbing even higher into the sky. And with wind comes snow. We had to climb up sets of six steep steps, a small platform, another six steps, platform, and so on all the way up. I’m not sure what people in Ukraine were thinking when they built slippery steps. It’s in Ukraine; it’s obviously going to snow. Slippery steps + snow + high winds = ?
After climbing the steps, and clinging on to the short railings for dear life, we made it to the top.
Looking out the front
We could see the other church we went in 3 weeks ago.
St. Sophia's from the top
I wasn't kidding about the wind, you know. Also, notice the safe looking metal fences holding us in. HA.
At one point my hat blew off and while Audrey went to grab it I held onto the wall freaking out. I put my hat in my bag after that. Cold ears, cold ears.
In the middle, looking straight up. The stairs are the little structure thing in the bottom left. You just go around and around heading up. And there were little sidewalks you could walk around and look out every few set of steps.
Agh. Looking down. I should mention somewhere that I'm afraid of hights.
We are definitely going back up the tower in the spring when there will for sure be nicer weather and we will have better views! We just have to make sure we go on a day with no wind, no rain, no snow, and lots of sun.
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