A Touch of Romance

We visited the in-town market this morning - and it was huge. Block after block of everything conceivable for sale, mostly from small booths. We read that there is an even larger one just outside of town which generates sales of over 20 million us dollars per day. I was feeling overwhelmed by how much was at this market, I'm glad we didn't visit the larger one.

In addition to well-behaved children here in the former soviet bloc, we've noticed very well-behaved dogs as well. They tend to gather in groups and all flop down together. The one fight we saw between two dogs was absolutely silent - nary a bark nor a growl.

We passed numerous huge Russian Orthodox churches today, but the interiors were all locked. There did seem to be perpetual services being held in the basements of all of the churches. No matter when we entered there was a service of some kind in process, and always with chanting and incense burning.

We even stumbled across a funeral at one, but no weddings. Which was surprising because there are brides and grooms with their full entourages all over town. Lots of brides like to be photographed next to our cruise ship and even more around the public buildings in town. When we walked past the Opera building today we counted six bridal parties being photographed around that one structure. And I thought the Maui beaches were overrun with weddings...