Svet and I had a good visa trip as I expressed in Part 1. We had gotten our visa in record time and the cost was almost cut in half. Svet and I looked at each other and said at the same time, “We could go home right now!” We laughed and decided to go to our hotel that we had reserved and regroup. This is where a bump in the road happened…
Svet and I went to the hotel and the hotel did not have our reservation. They also said that they had no rooms except for the most expensive rooms. Now I have been coming to this hotel for over three years now. I have watched a transformation of a good inexpensive hotel into a poor service expensive hotel. They have been remodeling rooms for years now and they have succeeded in removing all decent priced rooms from their roster. They simply want the high dollar people… (Keep in mind that I have literally been here every three months for three years and at some points have stayed a month at a time.)
I told Svet – lets go and search for a new hotel – And that is what we did.
Svet and I found a hotel called Tourist and it was next to a metro station. It cost the same as the other hotel’s economy rooms and all the rooms have been refurbished. It had a fantastic breakfast included in the room price. To say the least we were very happy with the new accommodations.
So Svet and I have found a new place to stay in Kiev and it very conveniently located to public transport of all types.
Now after that escapade with hotels. Svet and I needed something to do. So we just got on the metro and I just picked a station to get off and we were going to walk the city. I happened to pick a familiar station with out realizing it. It was the station that lead to the Cave Monastery.
Now this is a cool monastery and I remembered that they had a great place to eat there. So we walked to the monastery and moseyed around for a few hours. We found the cafe that is run by the monastery and enjoyed a good home cooked meal. Svet and I also visited a WWII park near the monastery and got to see about a dozen weddings. Seems that everyone wanted to get married that day.
As we ended our day and trip in Kiev we got to see thousands and thousands of people marching in the streets. (We heard later it was 200,000 thousand.) After asking what was happening, we found out that Yulia Tymoshenko the Ukraine Prime Minister was speaking downtown Kiev that day. (We will tell you that she has a lot of supporters who talk very very highly of her.)
We had a blast in Kiev…
Windows to Russia!
comments always welcome.