MoldovAnn

In addition to getting my Eddie Bauer fix, I have also been indulging in all my favorite and sorely-missed foods. I was in Columbus barely 12 hours before I asked Dad to take us to Graeter’s for THE best ice cream in the world - and not a prune or raisin anywhere near! (I’ll never understand why Ukrainians think prunes go well with ice cream.) I had a giant scoop of delicious cookies ‘n cream - now there’s a great combination that desperately needs to be introduced to Ukrainian ice cream makers!

I’ve also had lots of chips and salsa, baba ganoush, hummus (multiple varieties), Starbucks mocha frappuccino, and blueberry pancakes.

We had a great cook-out on Sunday at my Dad’s house. Several friends who came to Ukraine in December for our wedding joined us, and it was nice for Igor to have some familiar friends to talk to. He was busy most of the time, though, cooking shashliki - pork, beef and vegetable varieties on an open wood fire. Everybody raved about how great they were, but I think he won’t do that again during this trip. He was way too occupied with the slow and tedious process, and didn’t get to socialize with folks much.

Today we drove to Niagara Falls. It’s a pity we didn’t plan better and apply for a Canadian visa for Igor so we could enjoy the amazing view from the other side. But the American side is pretty damn impressive too. We arrived too late today to do the boat or cave excursions, but we’ll do them tomorrow morning. We got lots of fantastic photos, plus a couple cool videos.

We hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast at Bob Evan’s, so by 7:30 pm we were damn ready for some dinner. We had wanted to eat at the Top of the Falls restaurant, but we were quite disappointed to find out it closed at 6. We ended up at Hard Rock Cafe, which was great. If I’ve been talking for months about clothes shopping, Igor has been talking for months about getting “real American steak.” Poor guy, it took three days to finally get one! He had the same look on his face after inhaling his New York Prime Steak as I think I had after my shopping spree at Eddie Bauer warehouse - a much needed and totally satisfying fix.

I’m too tired now to wait for all the photos to upload. I’ll write more later, and will post some photos here too.