Another Travel Complication/Delay

Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2014--Kiev

I was contacted by my airline I am flying to Georgia this morning.  My flight that I was supposed to take next Wednesday fom Kharkiv to Batumi no longer exists (probably because it went over the area where the Russians have been fighting and where the Malaysian Airline was shot down).  They gave me two choices--to rebook at no extra cost to go through another city on Friday of next week or to give me a refund.  Well, I HAVE to get to Georgia, and there are no other alternatives than flying.  So I agreed to the delay that will keep me here for 2 more days and will cut my time in Georgia and Armenia by those two days.  It's frustrating, because there is so much I would like to see and do in those two countries. 

The news sent me back to the computer to do more adjusting of scheduled plans.  I contacted the owner of the apartment where I am staying and asked him to add two more days to my plans to be here.  I again changed my advance reservation for the apartment in Batumi.  (Thank goodness it has a flexible policy for adjusting or cancelling a reservation.) Because of the limited number of days, I have decided I will not stay longer than the one night in Batumi; what I see there Friday evening is all I will see.  I will leave immediately the next morning for Tbilisi.  I will spend only one night in Tbilisi to see my friends there.  Then I will head to Armenia early the next day.  That means I will be traveling 3 days in a row:  flying to Batumi on Friday, taking a mini-bus to Tbilisi on Saturday, and taking a mini-bus to Yerevan on Sunday.  Whew!  And it means I will now only have 5 nights in Yerevan (for seeing that city and making side trips to visit the major sights throughout the small country).

Due to all of that, I didn't get out of the apartment until after noon today.  And I still had to exchange money.  I found a good rate (the lowest so far, so the local currency keeps going up) not far from the apartment, so that was out of the way fast. 

Mostly, I just walked streets in new neighborhoods I hadn't explored yet.  I passed by the theater that produces operettas/musicals.  I walked by the Olympic Stadium, home of the Kiev Dynamo, a popular and very successful soccer team.  I went by the old market building, but there aren't many stalls inside anymore; shops have taken up the outer rim with individual entrances, and not much remains inside anymore.  Both the old market building and the Olympic Stadium both have interesting designs, though, as you can see from the links.

I saw a Billa Supermarket and went inside to shop.  Usually Billa is a large store with great prices.  Unfortunately, this one is rather small with limited choices of what can be bought.  Anyway, I got some pasta, butter, garlic, cheese, and cookies (a kind I've seen all over Ukraine and wanted to try). 

I'm exhausted from the pressure of changing my travel plans.  Hope they are settled now.  Tonight, I will relax here in the apartment.  I will watch 2-3 short films on my computer, maybe make a call or two, and read from my current novel.