The Best Weekend

My little sweetheart came to visit me last weekend. And every time she came my days turned bright and sunny regardless of the weather. I admire our time together even more since the big war started. Truthfully, I borrowed the title from a Ukrainian film that premiered on February 2, 2022 - "The Best Weekend". Then when our reality split into two. The former that suddenly turned almost unreal looked at us from posters and advertisements for many months since Feb 24th. And the latter in which I could not believe until the last day rushed with the speed of a hurricane and with the same destructive force.

I remember its huge poster on the facade of the nearest cinema. It would have been a great success if not for the war. A good, kind, light and funny movie about timeless values with a good ending, about how different people end up in Kyiv on the weekend. We watched it with my daughter just before the taxi took her to the train station.

The weather forecast on my smartphone warned about cooling to +4 a week before. Closer to the date, the forecast changed to a warmer but rainy weekend, then it promised warm and sun and ended up with thick fog for 2 days. 😅😜 But I waited and planned her visit for so long that I had interesting activities for any weather.

Expocenter of Ukraine

Saturday was dedicated to the Expocenter of Ukraine (VDNG). Its area is 286 hectares! A unique place with an exciting history that deserves a separate post. It has something to offer for all tastes - walking in the woods or driving a bike or riding a horse, food court, sports grounds, Ice Rink, lake with swans, museums, many creative cafes and bars, loft zones, barbeque zones, a venue for famous fests, a shelter for dogs who have lost their owners due to the war, and where you can not only donate funds but also your free time by walking their dogs. By the way, we also wanted to try, but there was a long line of those who wanted to!

Also, it is one of the most popular photo zones full of lovely installations. On weekends, you can meet many extravagant characters here. I rarely visit this place, so I saw some slots for the first time as well.

Greenhouse.

First, we headed here. A photogenic place overgrown with wild grapes.

Because the camera of my smartphone stopped working after the recent repair (they fixed one feature and broke another) I use some of my daughter's photos here, with her consent of course:

Since this place does not receive any funding from the state, they had harch times last winter. The plants in the greenhouse could die without heating, and there was no income from tickets and no supplies. Volunteers and staff found stoves, bought firewood and stayed on guard here throughout all winter, trying to maintain a constant temperature. In the end, they managed to save almost 80% of the plants.

The weather was like in a fairy tale. Alleys and fields in a fog hiding the horizon, red and golden leaves swinging with the wind in the air, covering summer playgrounds, their empty tables and sits still waiting for the visitors, walking paths and green grass. Mulled wine? Yes, please 😇❤️

Photos courtesy of @nataliabuchynska

We walked aimlessly and talked until we were hungry. The location has a very large selection of food establishments, but all of them are open-air or under a canopy. That is, it is cold there, and neither I nor my daughter like to eat with frozen fingers, sitting on a cold bench and shriveling. So we went home.

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Small Botanical Garden

The weather forecast predicted a sunny day the next day but it was foggy again. The viewpoint I was going to start from was obviously a bad idea so we went to Kyiv's small botanical garden - a popular place where townspeople used to feed squirrels. Especially after the morning watching the squirrel from our window. There is a large walnut tree growing in front of my windows, and in autumn (like now) Nick and I used to watch a squirrel making her way along the wires from the park to the walnut tree. There the squirrel plucks a nut, cleans it from the fleshy skin, checks it by turning it quickly in its paws, then puts it in its mouth and heads back (somewhere to the park) the same way, or sometimes just running on the ground.

We picked a few walnuts and set off hunting. The main idea is to take the nuts in the hard shell so you can knock one nut against another. The squirrel recognizes this sound and runs to you. Hypothetically. 😁

It may look a bit crazy from the outside - me walking a park alley knocking the nuts. But just in a couple of minutes, I noticed a red tail in the shadow of trees. Unbelievable :D Maybe it is because a harvesting season, but this method works! 4 nuts <-> 4 squirrels! 100 from 100, LOL.

And if you are an attentive and smart reader you should ask me how could knock the last nut if I had 4. 😉 Okay, we found one right there on a huge log, someone probably left it for the squirrels but we found it first.😉

This time, I had my camera with me but I used both hands to make the sound to attract a squirrel while Nat was filming in absolute amusement. ❤️ It turned out to be a very exciting and extremely lovely activity.

The last squirrel was grateful and kind enough to freeze for a few moments so I could take a picture of her. Nataly noticed that she was literally posing - changing her pose after each shutter sound! This is what I got (and lots of joy and happiness):

After such a charge of positivity, we went to check several points saved on my Google map. A bookshop was closed due to Sunday (who could have guessed), so I took my daughter to another cute place - an art gallery that is free of charge and not crowded (sounds fantastic but it's true).

We walked along the streets of the old town and suddenly she said she was hungry. Her hunger always catches me by surprise. The offer of the tastiest ice cream in town was rejected, so we ended up in a small and lovely Spanish restaurant. We ordered a salad for Nat and tacos and mulled wine. All the food was delicious, and the music and the interior in 1920s style were magical.

I was listening to the soft music and remembering the film "Midnight in Paris" (2011). Its main character unexpectedly finds himself in the 1920s at midnight. This is my personal "Golden Age". 😇

Apparently, our sunny mood was transmitted to the air, because when we went outside, it was sunny! Viewpoint suddenly turned into a great idea ))

The viewpoint had to be found first, but it was easy. This place looked really cool - a mix of styles, freestyle and no style, new and old stuff, paintings, drawings, writing on the walls, and lots of floors and twists and turns before you get to the top! It was worth it.