Dnipropetrovsk Anniversary Celebration

http://www.kodakgallery.com/PhotoView.jsp?&collid=82294239209&photoid=62294239209



Happy Birthday, Dnipropetrovsk! This city that we are in was founded on September 10th, 1776 from what we understand. At least this is when they celebrated the anniversary of the day it was founded. If you remember back in one or two of our blogs, we mentioned about that the town was doing some major construction and renovations across the street from our hotel on the waterfront, street and doing major landscaping with fountains and lighting. Well the past month we realized that they were pushing to get it all done before today for the celebration. And what a celebration it was. There were 2 major stages set up on either end of the waterfront. During the day they had dancers performing and music at the other one. Since we realized how big this celebration was going to be when we returned from our afternoon visit from the orphanage, and all the roads were blocked off and our taxi driver had to drop us off about 10 blocks from our hotel and there were mobs of people walking towards the waterfront. There were all kinds of alcohol and beverage tents set up to sell to the people, so since we saw the mass of people (must have been everyone in the city that piled into one area) we decide to stay in for the evening. Around 9:00pm we heard very loud fireworks set off, it sounded like the fireworks were right on top of the hotel. Robert and I ran out of our room and down the hall to catch a glimpse of the fireworks from the balcony in the reception area on our floor. The maids or madams as they call them here on our floor saw that we wanted to see the fireworks made rooms for us. The fireworks were the most SPECTACULAR fireworks display that both Robert and I have ever seen. They were setting them off from a few different barges in the river in front of our hotel every 10 – 15 minutes we would get about a 10 minute display of fireworks for about 2 hours straight (up until 11:00pm). When we looked out from the balcony to the street and waterfront below we were awestruck at the amount of people that were outside. There was no room to move on the street or the walkways of the waterfront, grass areas, sidewalks or parking lots. It was like the whole city shut down and everyone came out for the celebration.



If you click on the link to see the pictures, you will see some pictures of the waterfront that were taken from our hotel balcony during the day. Imagine the whole area filled with people and that is what it looked like in the evening during the fireworks display.