Khotyn

Our day started off with a bit of shopping at the market. There was an entire section full of nothing but various types of baby animals, they had ducklings, chicks, kittens, puppies and bunnies. Did we ever have trouble getting Mhari out of there, actually, I think Dad liked it most; he kept cuddling with the ducklings. Other than that, the best part of the market was the fact that you could get 4-inch long sausages for the equivalent of 25 cents each, (3 bucks a kilo). We stumbled out of the market and into the bus station, where a guard showed us to our bus. We were all seated beside different people as the bus left and 30 minutes later we were shown off at our stop (my Dad is better at the transport blogs). We quickly found a taxi, gave him 15 UAH (2 bucks) and were taken to what was the reason for all these buses, taxis and sausages, Khotyn fortress (-dramatic music-). The fortress is situated on a grassy, riverside location and is popular with Eastern European filmmakers. The tickets were a bit more expensive than the last fort and Mom felt ripped off having to pay 50UAH combined (6 dollars). We added up the costs and for return transport with admission and taxis the excursion cost 145 UAH (about 18 dollars) much less than a day s excursion in Turkey. We wandered around the fortress but because of ongoing renovation we couldn't explore the palaces inside. We left the fort and walked down the river bank. It was an extremely idyllic setting and we hung around for about 2 hours, eating lunch, chewing on sunflower seeds and discussing our return home (less than a month 'till England!). On our walk back up to the parking I decided that this fort was definitely more stunning than the one at Kamyanets, yet not as fun to visit because you couldn't explore as much. We got a bit lost getting back to a bus stop. We found one but were unsure about it so we ended up taking a taxi to the main bus stop, only to discover later that the bus stop we were waiting at worked just as well as the main one. Right now we are in our hostel and I think my Dad is cooking up some pasta for supper.