monumentary

Ukrayna –Kiev,

This was my most unplanned travel ever at the time, because I bought the ticket on a whim like a rich life living person’s nonchalance of  “Honey, let’s eat our dinner in Paris”. Where in fact really was a bit less cool like “Oh my god I found cheap tickets and they are actually on national holiday dates, and guess what I don’t have any plans!”

So since it was really unplanned and I was so unprepared for it, I can’t really mention of how did I do my homework but I can tell you good stories of what you should be doing for a non-regretful trip!

Take notes, now Miss Experience is speaking.  Before going into details, as usual you can find summary version below.

Travel: Kiev is a destination you can find cheap tickets all year long though as expected summer dates are a bit pricey then the usual.

Visa: They don’t require visa from a lot of country but just make sure you are a citizen of such country to avoid surprise.

Food: Borsh soup, Vereniki, Chicken Kiev,  hand made chocolates and of course their craft beers.

Sightseeing: Khreshchatyk Street,  Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square), Kiev funiculere Saint Sophia Cathedral, St. Michael’s Cathedral, St. Andrew’s Church, Kiev Pechersk Lavra – Cave Monastery

My good reasons like “I just returned from USA where I spent tons of money” and “I will be going to Italy soon so I really shouldn’t be spending any extra ” started to crumbled when I found a cheap promotion flight to Kiev just in time for a national holiday. “Well, tickets are already cheap, and if I stay in a cheaper place then I normally stay it shouldn’t be much of a problem, because I never seen a place in East Europe and I would spend the same daily money if I stay in İstanbul” train of thoughts made me buy it in less than 10 minutes.

Since I bought the tickets couple of days before the actual trip and I was very busy at the time, I couldn’t made my usual research and I told to myself that ” well, this is one of those random spontaneous trips that I hear all the time and I’m finally doing it haaa haaa haa” while my control freak in the inside was screaming. Only preparation I made was book a hostel and arrange airport pick up because I didn’t spoke the language and I wasn’t even gonna be able to read the writings there so I figured at the very least I can afford a soft start.

I will come to the hostel part in a bit but gotta say now that if it wasn’t for a certain lovely local girl we met at last days of our trip I would have missed lots of things and I would have regretted it later. Or in other words if you are doing a random spontaneous trip really be in that mode and don’t try to see and do it all 🙂

So lets get to the hostel part, ladies and gentleman, my dear friends, please do not tell yourself that ” Hostels are cool, it’s just for a couple of days, I’ll meet new people and get advice, whuuuu huuu” to yourself if you are over 26. Or should we say not exactly over 26 but if you think you prefer and afford having seats in a concert rather then standing your “hostel age ” is over.  Even if not, consider it again for Kiev. Because please keep in mind that in Kiev most building are very old, like Soviet Union’s time and style old, so even for hostel standarts you may be disappointed.

I, as you have guessed already, told myself that “This is the trip I was supposed to go in my younger university days, I’ll travel in cheap budget and stay in hostels, worst case scenario its just 4 days” because I didn’t want to blow my travel budget of upcoming long Italy trip. And frankly comments from the internet about meeting new people from common rooms and getting good advice seemed very attractive considering I could do no research. also when I looked for lodgings, I saw that hotels were not in good condition either, (well at least the hotels at my price range for this trip) and even though apartments seemed nice I didn’t want to book one because I spooked myself too much about getting lost without reading and speaking the language and with apartments no one to ask.

So I booked a separate room in a close to center hostel which seemed pretty cute with colorful rooms and good comments.

But as I later found out ….

Staying:

As I learned my lesson the hard way, tourist usually book apartments in Kiev.  You will probably come to this conclusion as well like I said when you saw generally hotel rooms seems very old and not as good as taken care of compared to hostel rooms. At least on the internet!

I can’t really complain from my hostel considering the money I paid, but the real problem was, as was the intention of this website, instead of avoiding I made a choice of stinginess that would affect my travel experience deeply for worse even though I could have afforded a better option. I say it because I realized my time for “common bathroom” usage apparantly has long passed and I didn’t realized it could become a bigger problem than I thought. Also not being able to figure it out how old pipes of small bathroom working didn’t helped. I think they also had a problem at the time with water so I had to shower with cold water, luckily for me it was hot summer so it wasn’t completely a story of sadness but not being able to start or end the day with a good shower certainly affected me. Also the paranoia of I need to be quick to get out before someone else is coming certainly wasn’t pleasant. So it may not be a problem for you but just make sure it really isn’t a problem for you and don’t underestimate its effect on you like I did.

As for the location, as usual picking a place close to the center for your travels is best. We were a short walk, two short stops away from center and it made exploring easier. Metro is cheap and covers a good area so do pick someplace close to center and or at least close to metro.

Food & Drink:

Ukrainian food, surprisingly for me, offered a great variety of meat, vegetables and dough combinations.

I would especially suggest trying Borch soup and a kind of ravioli Vareniki (Vereniki) and even though a French cook found it the traditional and popular choice of the famous Chicken Kiev.

Order your Vereniki in different fillings such as cheese, vegetables…and don’t skip the soup, really I was kind of hesitant to drink soup in the hot summer days but it was really good, also they have cold version of it for summer.

Additional to these, for traditional Ukrainian food, you can try to lunch or dine in Puzata Hata, a local food chain which has good interiors and good selection of traditional foods for good price. Also shopping centers food courts will give you quick preview of food choices.

Beer is cheap here and you can find many brewers who make their own craft beer.

Another thing that caught my attention was people drink too much cola here and there are lots of fareast kitchen chain restaurants such as Murakami. And you can also find lots of Mogol cuisine here as well.

Last but not he least, especially for ladies, you should try hand-made chocolates at Lviv Handmade Chocolate Cafe. It may not look the part from outside so I’m especially writing it here,but it is a perfect stop between your sightseeings and also to buy souvenirs. There are so many different and delicious kinds of chocolates here.

Sightseeing/Must do

Like all cities, if you have enough time to only go for one street it would be Khreshchatyk Street for Kiev. The famous Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square) is also located here. It is a lovely, easy to walk street with shops and cafes both sides.

Kiev has lots of cathedrals and monasteries and it is really easy to see most of them in a single good planned walk.  We even managed to see most of them with random walking! Of course the eastern style circular domes and  roofs with impressive bright blue and green colors are a good sight to see for these buildings. Let me list couple of most popular ones;

Saint Sophia Cathedral is the oldest cathedral in town which has history over 1000 years. As for the architecture you can easily recognize unique style of small domes and stunning golden colors and blues.  But don’t miss the mosaics inside. Since it is closer to center it’s one of the easiest places to reach and see first.

St. Michele Cathedral, again one of the oldest cathedrals of the Kiev city. Light blue and golden colors will captivate you as usual and it is a good place to see a classic Eastern Europe style cathedral. Since it’s still functional and used as a religious center please be mindful of the people who came to pray there.

St. Andrew Church, this church’s colors basically called me from far away and when I came to close I just loved it more. Unfortunately for me it was closed when I reached it but it is located on a nice street full of street vendors for various kind of souvenirs, so you can combine your trip with this.

This is important, do not skip Kiev Pechersk Lavra – Cave Monastery because it seems a bit far compared to other places and justify it like “We have already seen lots of cathedrals and churches here, I get the picture, its probably same…”. No it isn’t ok?

Because we made the same mistake of skipping this place with same reasoning and on our last day there, when our new friend a local girl heard we haven’t seen this place, she immediately took us here. There are crypts you can see here even though we couldn’t because of time and I left as I missed something here feeling. Also luckily we were able to attend a ritual here and the choir’s sound was amazing. On a side note holy water sold here is very good for drinking, I guess the Japanese science research of good vibrations make water molecules beautiful seems to be working 🙂

Kiev funicular, well this is just a small attraction where you get in a very old funiculere to climb 20 m but it is very cheap and saves you trouble of walking a hill and also every tourist does it 🙂

Besides all of these, Kiev city offers lots of sculptures, monuments scattered around and some of them you will probably see between sightseeing places. You will usually see monuments for their beloved Prince Volodymyr like located in a park that has a good view of the river,  Prens Volodymyr the Great Monumantery and the founder of the city Princess Olha and her three brothers such as Prenses Olha Monumantery.

This one is located between St Sophia ve St Micheal Cathedrals so it is really hard to miss.  I particularly liked Princess Olha and her brothers sculptures since they usually look like a badass FRP party which reminds my good old days 😉

Also the Holocaust Monument really made an impact on me, it is very tragic to hear thousands died because of hunger and there was this little girl statue just outside of it and it was the single most heart breaking image you can see.

Boat Tour is one of the side attraction Kiev offers, but it was as disappointing as it could be.  And I wasn’t even expecting something! I mean it’s summer, how bad could it be to take a short tour of the city with boat right? Well it was seriously uncheerful, because there is no good sight on boat’s course, and none of the good sightseeing places are near, at most you can see head of a giant sculpture from far, water color was muddy, it was hot and I don’t enjoy drinking from metal bottles.  I can’t say it was a complete disaster but in the end even with the “mate it’s cheap, let’s have a drink and take a tour in this good weather” approach we felt like it was unnecessary.

By the way don’t miss lover street lamps of Kiev when you hang out around main square. They are little symbols of Kiev.

And last words, when you say Ukraine, of course beautiful girls and party hard style night life comes to mind. I gotta say, nights are indeed seems colorful, especially gentlemen might emjoy it more sincce after visiting here, Kiev made into my top three rankings of “Don’t ever send your boyfriend/husband alone places in the World” list.