Day 38

Tuesday, May 18, 2010. As it turns out, the delegation that shut down the restaurant last night was because the Russian President was actually staying at the hotel. We found this out when leaving to go to the US Embassy, since there were Russian Secret Service all over the place. We waited out in front of the hotel for Alexey, but apparently all of the streets were closed down because of the President. So we waited… and waited… and waited, and all the while the Secret Service stared at Jerry since he was the only one who looked different. They probably thought that he was a Cuban assassin! After a while of the Secret Service apparently being very nervous, the manager of the hotel asked us to please step inside or go for a walk. We could no longer wait outside. So we went walking down the street and let Alexey know where we were headed. We ran into him, and he took us to the Embassy.

When we got to the Embassy, Anastasia had to be fingerprinted. Normally they only do this with ages 14 and up, but there was a problem with the system so we went along with it and had them do what they had to do in order to get the visas. They were issued to us with no problems, and we were finally DONE with all paperwork!

It took us almost 2 hours to get back to the hotel (about 4 miles away) because of the road closures, but we were happy that we finally had everything in order to go home on Thursday!
Wednesday, May 19, 2010. Today was a free day, so we decided to try and find the Harley Davidson in Kiev. The concierge desk told us that it was about a 30 minute walk and gave us a map. We walked for 4 hours (McDonald’s break in the middle) and still did not find it! There was almost mutiny since the girls were exhausted. We found a taxi finally, and he had no idea where it was either, so after driving around for about 30 minutes, we gave up and asked him to take us to the hotel. He had no idea where it was either! After driving about another 30 minutes, his car just stopped. In the middle of the road. Needless to say, we bailed out, paid him, and started walking. We were back at the hotel in about 5 minutes. We found out later that if we had gone 2 more blocks, we would have found Harley. *sigh*