Monday's Memories: My Favorite Castle and Winner!

We took a road trip to Western Ukraine in the spring of 2004. Turns out, we loved that part of the country because they spoke Ukrainian!! Although Ukrainian is the national language, the street language in Kyiv is Russian. The two languages are different enough to be confusing- like Italian and Spanish. Anyway, we visited a little village called Khotin that is off the beaten trail.

If you enlarge this, you can see that
the date on the sign is A.D. 1002.

At first, it didn't seem like much was here.
We went through this little guard shack.

But when we came out on the other side
and walked down the path a short ways,
this is what we saw:

The pictures don't do it justice.
It was just a hidden gem there by the river-
like we stepped back in time.

The Turks took over this area at one point
and built these structures.

Inside the castle walls.

The Turks added these symbols
in red to the castle walls
(try englarging to see them better).

To this day, this castle remains my favorite out of
all the ones we visited because it's still untouched
by hordes of visitors and the regulations of bureaucracy.

Now, on to the winner of the pysanky egg!

I printed off all of your responses- they were so fun to read!
I put them inside The Boy's Yellow Hat, and ...

Melissa Miller is the winner!
If you've never paid Melissa a visit, you need to do that ASAP!!
She is one of the classiest and sweetest laides you'll meet!