Travel — Kiev
If you’re thinking of travelling to Kiev, Ukraine — do it! (But don’t call it ‘the Ukraine’ — apparently, that’s a Russian thing)
Quick overview of the city for folks who are looking at a weekend type break who — like us — enjoy outdoors things accompanied by the odd spot of architecture and history, and washed down with plenty of good food and drink.
Kiev makes a brilliant long weekend destination . Yes, when you tell someone you’re going there, the reaction will be ‘oh, lovely…. but why?’. Bunch of reasons why below, along with some of the practicalities, and a ton of stuff that looked interesting but we didn’t get around to doing.
Why Kiev?
Fabulous buildings.
Yes, there’s all the obvious Baroque churches and cathedrals — 950 of them. Gold onion domes rule this city.


And don’t miss the Kiev Pechersk Lavra complex — a cave labyrinth from the 10th century with hundreds of monks, saints and the odd pope’s head availalbe for prayer.

Also don’t forget to wear stuff that covers shoulders, legs and hair, or you’ll wind up borrowing whatever’s available and looking ….

But while I’d expected a certain amount of Soviet grimness — or at least London-style modern ugliness, plus maybe a few medieval remnants — everywhere you walk around the centre is full of beautiful, slightly dilapidated old buildings from 17–19th centuries.

Plus random things like this Gorodetsky’s ‘House with Chimeras’. Normal house with extra monsters and beasties. Just because.

The outskirts, however, look like where you’ll find all the ugly you can eat. From just across the river where you leave the centre, through to the end of Kiev city, seemed to be solid tower blocks without a single redeeming feature. View from the airport taxi was enough for me.

Public art
Crazy amounts of street art, from big ‘proper’ stuff funded by the government like this rather lovely dandelion fountain (this is close to the musical fountains)

To a random sculpture of Gogol’s nose and ‘tache, stuck outside an art gallery near Andrew’s Descent where all the artists sell their gear. Brand new ancient tradition is to touch the nose to ward off colds.

The street art scene is also great — beautiful giant murals cover the whole sides of buildings, professionally done — the one just outside our hotel was done by a famous Venezuelan artist, for example. Even the ugly outskirts had a small share of this loveliness.

And ‘Landscape Alley’ was probably the most wonderful children’s park I’ve ever seen, turning Alice in Wonderland into seats, slides and swings.

Food, restaurants, cafes.
I was braced for small portions of tasteless food, from grim memories of eating in Prague in the late 90s — this country has had 3 revolutions since 2000 and the last one finished just 2 years ago, after all. But I was happily disappointed.
Coffee is taken very seriously. Coffee kiosks or automatic coffee machines are everywhere , so you’re never more than 10 meters from a fix. While those coffees weren’t amazing, the proper cafes were great — we bought a tonne of beans to bring home from our favourite, Kaffa Kav’yarnya (who bake their own bread as well as roasting their own beans, and have lovely outside seats in the sun…)

But the the restaurants were the biggest wins. While I hate returning to the same restaurant — we wound up eating in “Ostannya Barykada” (last barricade) twice in just 4 days. Details of how to find it and get in here. It might sound a bit gimmicky (Restaurant in the central Globus shopping centre? Password to get in? Revolution theme? FFS) — but I’d rate it as one of my top restaurant experiences ever. Just do it. Oh, and it is *cheap* — excellent aged fillet steak was about £7, cocktails and wines about £2–3. Pushing the boat out with three courses of their most expensive options — including local sparking wine, foie gras, flounder, chocolate & chilli ‘rafika’ spirits, and sour cherry dumplings — was still well under £50 for us. Smaller dinner for two of fillet steak and a few beers was under £20.

Pretty much any restaurant guide to Kiev will also tell you to go to Kanapa. They’re right. If you want to try new Ukrainian cuisine, tradition with a twist, with ‘interesting’ ingredients in beautiful surroundings — this is the place to do it. It’s owned by the same family of restaurants as the ‘last barricade’, but different style — beautiful traditional wooden house near St Andrew’s, opulent old fashioned interior, with a balcony out the back looking through trees down over the city. I went for the tasting menu with alcohol. Most of the food is stuff that I wouldn’t normally choose — pig’s ear, brain, aspic, sweetbread, ‘salo’ (pork fat) — but it was surprisingly delicious. I ate — and drank — everything with delight (except the varenyky, dumplings of pike and pork fat — too fishy for my taste; gave up half way). Anyway — 6 courses of delicious wines and foods, including caviar and bubbles, for £25? Can’t say no. Oh, and try the cherry beer too if you can fit it in — just the faintest hint of fruit, not sweet, very delicious.


Bonus round: there are also many excellent Georgian restaurants (such as Shoti); rare chance to try out this cuisine which is pretty hard to find elsewhere. It’s a particularly delectable blend of eastern and western cuisines, with a lot of unique things. I went for khachapuri — kindof a bread bowl with cheese, served boiling hot baked fresh from the oven, with a raw egg yolk stirred in at the table. Heart attack on a plate, but delicious.

Practical stuff
Getting there
Flew in with Wizz Air, first time using them. Planes are fairly new — A320–200 — but the layout is cramped, and it has the least comfortable seats of all the budget options I’ve tried. Pretty mediocre food options too, and was 1h delayed. Meh. But cheap and the flight times worked better — even though we landed 2am.
Arrived in Igor Sikorsky Kyiv International Airport — this is the closer of the two airports, <10k from the centre; Uber straight to hotel cost about £4. Entry was bit grim, though — mess of thousands of people trying to get through security; it took over half an hour. The first 3 gates were for citizens, with just 2 for the majority of us foreigners; no clear queueing system so bit of a free for all before it finally divided in two — so look around closely when you get in and you can probably jump ahead to the right side where the foreigners go. When the Ukrainians have finished, they let foreigners through those gates too — so you can also also start moving towards those gates when the queues there are reduced to near zero.
Flew back to London with Ukraine Airlines. Pretty ok; average budget level of comfort in seats; usual old-ish 737–800s; average menu range though relatively cheap, at 3–4 euro for wine/beer.
Departed from Boryspil Airport — a good 45 mins drive from city centre, and slow traffic in centre even mid afternoon. Went for exec uber for a change, £15ish — a regular uber would be £10ish. Airport was really fast to get through at 4pm. Three different sets of passport / boarding card / luggage checks, each had a bit of queue but through each of them in a few minutes — much faster than the way in. We decided to use the Business Lounge — they have two with the same name, confusingly; apparently the one we found was the smaller one, very quiet. Very uninspiring design — think functional budget style. Food options were pretty humdrum — baked chicken, pasta, various snacks — and wine / beer options similarly limited. But they had reasonable showers, which compensates for a lot (why don’t more lounges have this?) — you get a bag with towel, shower gel, shampoo, soap, shaving kit and slippers, which is better than I expected. Just the job after a long final day of sightseeing in the sun.
Getting around
The centre’s very walkable — felt like we got to know all the main streets within a few days. Things look further apart on the map than they actually felt while walking, and the hills are pretty minor. Didn’t bother with public transport, and barely uber’d. Tried one taxi who tried to rip us off — no meter, and wanted to charge 200 uah for a couple of kilometers — so we got out and walked again instead. But that’s about as bad as it got — generally a safe and easy place to walk, no hassle other than some guys offering pigeons for photos who were a bit intrusive but eventually fecked off.
Weather was beautiful — hot but dry and breezy, very pleasant. 30ish degrees every day in early September: much better than London.
Going out
It felt like there’s a cracking scene if you’re in your twenties and want to party. I’m not, and didn’t, but just wandering around, you stumble across a lot of courtyard parties with great atmosphere. Gay nightlife is picking up a bit as well, with a few brave places finally listing themselves as gay — didn’t try, but great to see. Attitudes to gay there apparently are changing slowly — it’s legal, but has some way to go — so we were relatively discreet, no hand-holding etc.
Pubs are decent, but craft beer / IPAs didn’t seem that common yet. Cherry and nettle beer were the draft options in some of the restaurants — both pretty pleasant. There are also a few wine bars around — we went to Vian, which was surprisingly empty on a Saturday night — good range of local wines, though nothing particularly memorable.
So — restaurants are very much The Thing To Do, IMO. But — brace yourself to spend time. Service is uniformly very, very slow. Coffee alone can take half an hour. Things you’ve ordered are forgotten or misunderstood. Service can seem grumpy / unfriendly in some places. Even when service is good, it’ll still take unfeasibly long. It’s possible that’s why Kiev’s main McDonalds in Maidan Sq is — apparently — the third busiest in the world. Also — confirming: chicken Kiev is indeed very popular here , available in most restaurants — there’s even a dedicated restaurant called Chicken Kyiv.
Shopping is ok. Lots of expensive places doing western haut couture — not really my scene. VSI Svoi was probably the best shop — local Ukranian designed bags, shoes and clothes.
Before you go
Motherton of history worth reading up before you go. Hadn’t really appreciated that they’d had 3 revolutions just since 2000, and that Kiev is still clearing up after the last one finished in 2016. Reminders of what had happened are everywhere, with many memorials to those who died in the recent revolution of dignity.
Learn the Russian alphabet, if you can. Lots of words you’ll see around are transliterations of English words — ‘stop’ signs, taxi, toilet, restaurant, etc — once you can puzzle out the sounds, things will make a bit more sense.
Other stuff for itenerary
We stayed in Maidan Square area — great location, central to most sights / shopping. The hotel was Senator Maidan — excellent place; huge rooms, beautiful modern style design. It’s on the more expensive side — £100-£150 range — but nice if you fancy a splurge.
Easy walk for one day: St Sophia’s (pay to get in), St Michael’s (free to wander)- they’re just down the road from each other). Then along Volodymyrska St (lots of artists and paintings for sale on the street here too)to St Andrews (Gogol’s nose is slightly uphill from here). Or you can go via Landscape Alley. Then go down Andrew’s descent (“Andriyivskyy Descent”) — tons more paintings for sale — it’s described as being like Montmartre. Or take the funicular. Kanapa is just down from St Andrews, if you’ve had enough.
Also worth walking to the Lavra complex via the parks — there’s a lovely walkway going mostly through parkland from near the Friendship of Nations arch. It passes Park Bridge, and the Holodomor / Famine museum, the park of Eternal Glory (love the names!). And past the Lavra you can carry on to the Motherland monument — though we wimped out after the caves and went for food in Shoti instead.
It’s also pretty easy to spend an afternoon just mooching around the centre on a Sunday when traffic is closed on the main roads. Admire the monuments around Maidan Square area, then wander down Kchrezchatyk St to Besarabska Market, via the House of Chimeras and shops like VSI Svoi.
Some of the other stuff. Went to the ones with *; will have to go back for the rest.
- * Coffee with ravens at Kashtan cafe. Nice organic cafe in courtyard with two ravens in a huge cage; bring scraps of raw meat to feed them if you can. Good coffee and food.
- * Green theatre. Looked interesting — old soviet open air amphitheatre — but currently seems to be closed to the public.
- Miniatures museum — in the Lavra but charged separately. Big things made tiny.
- Izolyatsia — arty district in one of the main ports
- Hidropark — island downriver with beaches, bathing areas, boats for hire
- Vozdvizhenka barrio — billionaire’s ghost town. Luxury toy town created over a decade ago — which never sold, and is gradually falling apart.
- Fisherman’s Bridge (Rybalskyi Bridge) — a half-dismantled steel Fisherman’s Bridge that’s popular with locals and urban explorers
- Lysa Gora (Bald mountain) — old hill fort, apparently much used by witches
- Babin Yar — Jewish massacre memorial
Fun facts:
- In Soviet times, each family owned its own toilet seat for use in shared bathrooms
- In ranking for the most melodious language in the world Ukrainian is second only to Italian. In addition, at a Paris language contest held in 1934 it was recognized as the third most beautiful language in the world according to several criteria: vocabulary, phonetics, construction of sentences and phraseology. The first two are Persian and French.
- Ukraine is the world’s fifth largest consumer of alcoholic drinks. Only Czechs, Hungarians, Russians and Moldovans drink less. According to statistics, every citizen of Ukraine aged over 15 drinks more than fifteen liters of alcohol per year; that is one liter more than Irish drink and two liters more than resident of Norway do.
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