Odessa, Ukraine July 5th, 2008

Charles very happy to have made it up the stairs. Look at the high grass in the park. The real shame is, they have many parks but none of them are well taken care of. Weeds, high grass was everywhere in the green areas. A shame.
This was a giant bronze obese baby! People touch his toes and believe me there was a line, for fertility!
Stairs, stairs, stairs...the only way to get up into the city.
How many wedding can you go to in one afternoon???
I do love a good wedding!
Kathleen was starting to look a little Russian...where is her smile?
A public park where everyone seemed to be hanging out.
Another happy couple. Where is everyone else??
Lovely building.
Kathleen thought she should get in on the "luck". Health, happiness and money....let's hope so.
Nicky though he better get in on the money rub! No fool! It couldn't hurt!
NO smiles for the camera! Ice cream, vanilla thank goodness. If she is this unhappy on her wedding day...YIKES!!
When you don't know where you are going, any road you take will get you there!
The "love tree". We will celebrate our 17th wedding anniversary this month, so we figured a picture under the love tree would be appropriate for us as well!
Obviously the best man and maid of honor wear sashes!! Maybe somebody should give that a go in Birmingham!! It might set a new trend!!
Roses were everywhere.
This the the restaurant we stopped to people watch. Very nice and nobody there spoke English. We pointed to things and she brought us what we pointed at, that worked.
We woke up to thunder and lightening. Our walking tour was cancelled and it was music to our ears! We took our time getting ready and made a Welden Family tour of our own. This city when it was under communist control of Russia was the 4th most important city in all of the communist kingdom behind, Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Warsaw, Poland. The city is like an old lady that still applies lipstick before she goes to bingo at the nursing home! There are MANY beautiful building but they are in all state of repair/disrepair. It looked like what you would read about in a Russian love story, fountains, parks, colorful buildings that sometimes looked candy stripped. Lots of history with statues of fallen soldiers, rulers, Czars, all over the place. They must believe in "luck". We were there on a Saturday. We "crashed" a few wedding parties and took pictures. We would see the brides and grooms walking from one park, statue to another for photos and to touch some of the statues. We figured out on one of them the statue must have been for health, money and babies as they all were clamoring to touch that one together. Then there was the "love tree". It was not very beautiful, but they all seemed to think it was important to have their picture made there, so we did too. We climbed about 10,000 stairs, trusted a Russian lady to take us to a money changer and then she dragged us to a not so great area and the kids were not happy with me but she seemed like a little old Aunt Gertrude, for those of you who know the type, and then in front of us was an OLD building but preserved on it was a fresco of the Blessed Virgin. All must have been hidden during the communism that existed for so long, but there it was and she was SO proud to show it to us. I guess she knew we were a Christian family wandering around in a place where Christianity is scare. She gave us a smile, and those aren't easy to get in this part of the world and she nodded and left us to continue our day. We really think this city will return to glory. It may take a billion dollars to get it there but they are trying.