Scott Chandler and Judy Bonhiver

September 6, 2002
We're in Kiev and enjoying the city very much. We arrived from Moscow yesterday morning after about 16 hours on the train (over night) and after choosing a car to bring us to our hotel instead of taking a bus we got "taken" for more money than we should have by the driver because we didn't have any Ukrainian money yet and although we knew the exchange rate, he was a very fast talker. But, it was a lesson and one we hope not to go through again.

Our hotel is in a great location and although the weather isn't sunny, it's very comfortable (around 20 degrees C) and relatively dry (no rain, at least, although humid). We checked in, left our luggage and took off to checkout the city on foot. We found lots of beautiful old buildings, wonderful parks and a beautiful downtown area. There are lots of shops on the street but also many more, under the streets. The ambience is very friendly and refreshing, after Moscow. I love Moscow but it has more Soviet style buildings than Kiev. And here, the people driving cars actually stop for pedestrians!!! Very little horn honking, less hustle and bustle although lots of people in business suits.

The city is full of hills and valleys - very different again from Moscow and from Rostov which are both relatively flat. This reminds me quite a bit of San Francisco in the amount of climbing we're doing and the stairways. Today Scott had a plan for our walk and we climbed up to the Presidential Offices because right across the street is a wonderful old building called by the community "The Monster House" because it is decorated with lots of creatures (frogs, mermaids, serpents, rhinoceros, deer, elephant heads etc.) Although it was covered by scaffolding and netting for repairs we were still able to see enough of it to get a flavor of what it used to look like and will probably look like after the repairs.

Tonight, I found a place to get my hair cut (three dollars) so Scott bought a beer and went to sit in a nearby park to wait for me. After my cut we wandered back down to the main street (Khreshchatytska) and discovered hundreds of young people all over the place, enjoying the nice evening, sitting along the street, walking in the parks, standing by the fountains; the place was crawling with them. So we watched for awhile and then headed up to another more quite park to sit and have a drink and watch the people. This park had an outdoor cafe and a small band playing so Scott bought a boxed joice for me, a beer for himself and we sat to listed to the music. A man asked if the place next to us was free and leaned a child's scooter up against the bench while he went to buy a beer. When he returned, we struck up a conversation and had a very nice talk with him. He's an architect and lives here in Kiev with his wife and four kids (oldest is in the music conservatory where she plays the viola; youngest, we met with him in the park - she's four and her name is Masha). He's traveled all over the world for his business and has lived many different places. As we started to leave he asked us to call him tomorrow between three and four o'clock because he would like to invite us to go to his dacha with him tomorrow evening and Sunday but needs to make sure he doesn't have to work (has to talk to his partner). So, tomorrow we'll go to the Caves Monastery early in the day and get back to the hotel in time to give him a call, to see if we can join him and his family.

We will probably leave Kiev on Sunday evening or Monday morning but we're still not sure if we'll go to Odessa or Crimea first. We're still asking people about the best route and the best times to be in each, as well as the least expensive route to Istanbul from one or the other.

More soon.
Judy
PS We had four rolls of film put onto CDs so we're going to try to find an Internet Cafe where we can use them to put some of the pictures onto our web site. So, check the photos out too, tomorrow (I need to convert them to jpg first).