Not according to plan

Our plan for today was that I'd go alone for a morning bike ride and then we'd go together to the Dudutky historical park. I did get in the ride and I did not get lost. Everything else turned out different.

After breakfast we learned that Svetlana the cook reaqlly wanted to make green borsch soup for us. Since we managed to disappoint her on some earlier occasions, we decided to start the day on our innkeepers' schedule, going together to a local park.

The park wasn't as nearby as we imagined, but we enjoyed a long walk through the old estate of the former lord of the territory and came to feel that our relationship to Sergey and Irena had passed beyond business and toward friendship.

The green borsch probably deserves its own essay, or even an ode. Let me just say for the sake of brevity that I REALLY enjoyed lunch.

After lunch we decided to explore the local woods once again. We walked through the woods into a huge lush meadow, where we plotzed out and took an accidental nap.

When we got up to continue our walk, we found ourselves passing through the village of Kohana, a spectacularly quaint place. Unlike some of the other old villages we've seen, this one had families with children. We also saw here very colorfully-dressed people in peasant-style outfits, a man plowing a field behind his horse, and numerous other elements of classic culture. It's a place I'd enjoy bringing other tourists to experience fo themselves.

We finally turned around when we reached a small lake, and amazingly enough we found our way home pretty easily.

Sometimes the best days come out completely different from the original plan.