St. Andrew's Slope, beginning near St. Andrew's Cathedral.  In recent years, this has been transformed into a tourist bazaar.  It leads down from the St. Sophia area to the flat area of town along the river know as Podol.  Near the bottom, a highlight for us, is the Mikhail Bulgakov house and museum.  Mostly suppressed during the Soviet period, Bulgakov is popular now.  Check out The Master and Margarita,and Heart of a Dog.  The vendors here have an enormous variety of crafts on sale, at least some of it seemingly of good quality.  The cobblestones (knew I think) are so rough to walk on, you almost have to stay on the sidewalk amid the vendors' stalls.



Vendors at the Kiev central train station.



More vendors at the train station.  This kind of prefab kiosk is common throughout Russia and Ukraine.  Smaller ones can found on practically every street corner and near every bus stop.  Similar ones, and open air tables, line the passageways of most Metro stations.  The red-on-yellow sign advertises "currency exchange"--you are never more than a block from a currency exchange.  Some guide books advise you that locals prefer dollars to grivnia.  In our experience, while dollars are a good back up for your ATM or credit card to be exhanged, grivnia (and rubles in Russia) are the prefered form of payment.  However, if you spend a lot of time in rural areas where cash machines are rarer, you might have a different experience.