WE HAVE ARRIVED IN UKRAINE!

After our brief stopover in Doha we arrived in Kiev, Ukraine.

We had a few days in Kiev, spending the time wandering around the neighbourhood, visiting cathedrals and doing some food shopping.  Eating out is so cheap however that cooking was never going to happen! We have eaten out for dinner every night and found cheap snack type places for lunch. 

For a couple of dollars we took an Uber in to the main part of the city to go exploring. There are some magnificent, historically significant buildings and the cathedrals are beautiful. 

St Sophia’s Cathedral

The cathedral is one of the city’s best known landmarks and the first heritage site in Ukraine to be inscribed on the World Heritage list. Whilst its thirteen golden domes, striking green roof and sparkling white walls make this a very impressive building from the exterior it could be easily argued that the interior is the most astounding aspect of Kiev’s oldest standing church.  Many of the mosaics and frescoes are original, dating back to 1017–31. Unfortunately no pictures were allowed inside so we cannot show you how stunning this building really is.

St Michael’s Golden Domed Monastery

From the bell tower of St Sophia’s Cathedral you cannot help but notice a very striking building down the road, so a short stroll later we found ourselves outside St Michael’s Golden Dome Monastery. Whilst this building was reconstructed in the 1990’s, as the original cathedral was demolished by the Soviet authorities in the 1930s, it easy to see why this is one of the most beautiful and important Orthodox temples in Ukraine with its seven golden domes, impressive domed entrance and striking sky blue walls.

St Andrew’s Church & Independence Square

Sitting atop a hill in the historic centre of Kiev is the stunning St Andrew’s Church.  It was built in the late 18th century by Italian architect  Bartolomeo Rasterelli, who is also known for designing the Winter Palace in St Petersburg. This was closed for renovations so we never got to go inside but another stunning religious place of worship. We then wandered on down to Independence Square, a popular gathering place for locals and tourists alike. We found a nice warm place to have lunch accompanied by tea and a mulled wine.

Our real mission in Kiev was to collect the 25 boxes of personal items that we had shipped from Australia. After a slight delay as our paper work did not arrive on the same plane as our boxes, we were able to pick them up from customs. All said and done this was an easy process if quite slow, mainly because we had Dmitriy with us who can speak the local language. After going backwards and forwards a few times between offices and filling in paperwork, they brought out the first 10 or so boxes and x-rayed them. When they finally found the other 15 they were just given to us. No x-ray, no searching, nothing. They did get a bit excited when they were going through the list of items we had to provide them when they saw “10 x notepads”. We informed them these were notepads made of paper, not computers and all was good. The best part was that it only cost us $12.30!

After playing a bit of tetris to fit all the boxes into Dmitriy’s van, we made the 2 hour trip south to Cherkasy where we will stay in an apartment until the truck is completed.