We looked for the Cossacks and finally found them. Our two week cruise on Europe's third largest river was billed as "In the Footsteps of the Cossacks". We started at Kiev, the capital city of Ukraine, and went down the Dnieper River about six hundred miles to the Black Sea, and Crimea.

We expected some spectacular scenery, beautiful cathedrals but were taken aback by the number of historic monuments commemorating Ukrainian and Russian and Cossack heroes over the centuries of warfare this part of the world has so ... (more)