The second weekend in Kiev

I don’t know if I look forward to the weekend during classes because I’ll get some rest, or if during the weekend I look forward to Monday so I’ll get some rest. We spent the second weekend touring around Kiev again. I’m not sure if I could have seen this city in a day or two like when I breezed through Western Europe on the way here. There really are a lot of things to see, lots of cathedrals and monasteries, many famous buildings and museum, and lots of interesting culture and food.

Friday night we hit up the infamous Kiev nightlife. Clubs in Eastern Europe are insane, and if you like techno you would love it here. First we went on the metro to Shooters near the city centre. This was pretty crappy and after noticing most of the people going inside were creepy old men, we headed to another club close to our place. The cover for most of the big clubs in the city centre is about $15, which is crazy for Ukraine. We went to Forsage, in the student neighbourhood, and danced until it was light outside. There were three floors, one with more rock, one with R&B and the top two levels with techno and dancers in cages. We haggled our way into a cheap cab around 5am and headed home for some sleep before a full day of being a tourist.

Sometime after lunch on Saturday we made it to St. Sophia’s Cathedral. This is the oldest church in Kiev and was built around 1015. The outside is beautiful, but inside is insane. It’s very big and most of the murals and frescos inside have been fully restored. It sucks that you can’t take pictures inside though. You can see parts of the original floor, original rooms, and pictures of how the cathedral evolved over the last 1000 years.

We walked back to Krechshatik to eat at Puzuta Khuta. This is my favourite chain of Russian-style cafeterias. I was also starving so I got all of my favourite Ukrainian dishes. For all the food, it only came to about $5, so awesome. We waddled back up the hill towards St. Sophia’s. We took the funicular down to the lower old city along the river. It was a hilarious experience, and not at all as exciting as the tourist book made it sound, but for about 12 cents it was a pretty cheap thrill. There were some really dark clouds coming in, but we kept walking along the riverfront. We could see the park where we were last weekend with the rainbow monument and also a real rainbow spanning the river in the same place. It was really random and cool. The Podil district all dates to the 1800’s because it all caught fire and was rebuilt around same time. It’s really nice and now full of restaurants and pubs.

We headed home early to just relax because we had another full day planned for Sunday