Kyiv, the capital of the Ukraine, famous for the delicious chicken Kyiv (and my favourite…mini kyivs), Dynamo Kyiv football team, being the largest country in Europe with the deepest metro station on the continent…but why else go there? Well, we rarely need a reason to travel and we find that most places have something special about them. Kyiv has a lot of that something special – you will see as soon as you come into the city from the airport (taxi is easiest c. 350 hryvnia / 20 eur) a big river (the Dnieper), green hills and a forest of golden domes of the orthodox churches. This is a beautiful city that will keep you fully occupied for a very long weekend and some more.
So armed with several pages of top recommendations from our Ukranian friend Sergii, lets divide this blog into the following parts of our trip – churches and monasteries, art, the metro and of course food and drink.
Churches and monasteries
What you will find with most of the churches is that they
have almost all been reconstructed after the communist era where the party felt that it was better to demolish the churches to make way for huge concrete edifices of power and administration; luckily the iron curtain fell and Kyiv has been studiously removing the hammer and sickle from the city.
Our first Cathedral was right under our noses – St Volodymyr’s Cathedral – as we were lucky to have an amazing panoramic view of part of the city from our hotel room – a problem with rooms like these is that they make you never want to leave! When we did tear ourselves away from the room then we found the cathedral very much a working one, devotees popping in to kiss their saint and then get back to work just as quick…the mosaics and paintings inside are really impressive, and even a moody looking Lucifer above the door that is interesting to see.
On these types of city trips we always find ourselves walking a well worn path along a main route that takes in all the sites – a first pass to get a feel for the city, a second pass to track down our favourite restaurants, a third pass for lots of pictures and a final pass to get a few more pictures just in case the weather/ light conditions are more favourable. In Kyiv, this well worn route was a triangle that was marked out with all these golden domes… from our hotel, by Volodymyr’s Cathedral up to St Michael’s Golden
Domed Church (this name perfectly describes what you will see here), across to St Andrew’s church (that sits like a Sacre-Coeur above an artistic, cobbled hill just like Montmartre) and back down again past the complex of St Sophia’s – a blissful oasis in the middle of the city. Now Kyiv is not overwhelming to start with, but St Sofia makes you feel as though you are even further away from the hustle and bustle of the crowds outside. We were a bit late in our visit so could only cover the main spots but even they are so worth it. The UNESCO heritage church is spectacular, naturally as UNESCO there are no pictures allowed, so a lot of your time will be spent marveling at the frescoes and then trying to dodge the guardians (who dress a bit like hobbits) to snap a cheeky picture or two because it is just too beautiful not to! Ascending and descending the upper level stairs are like some templar feeling. Whilst in St Sofia, make sure you go up the bell tower, you think you will only get access to the first level, but after that you can keep on going up the narrow stairs and walkways to some pretty spectacular views of the city (and a bit of a vertigo feeling on the narrow walkways and stairs to get up there).
The Kyiv Pechersk Lavra (aka Kyiv Monastery of the Caves), somewhat of a unique
religious place and one of the main centres of Orthodoxy in Eastern Europe. We had a couple of trips here, and all seems quite religiously ‘normal’ at first – a complex that has all the golden domes, plenty of monks to bow to and another impressive bell tower to get some more great views across the churches and the river below. Where this monastery starts to get a bit more different is when you enter into the caves – the shorter near caves and much longer far caves – definitely not for the claustrophobic – c. 1.5 m wide and 2m high – dark, humid, with just a handheld candle to light your way; and in the tunnels you will be in a line of devotees to all the saints and icons that are interred in the caves, expect it to be slow progress as most visitor will stop and kiss all icons and saints in their coffins as you pass through. It’s a surreal experience, but it is also good to get back out into the fresh air.
Art
If all this gold is not enough for you, then you will find plenty of artistic distraction around the city… little hedgehogs made of nails tucked away in small squares; political wall murals and the Park Landscape Alley on old Kiev hill where you will find yourself going through the looking glass and into curious and funny art and wonky park benches overlooking a great view of the city.
Art in Kyiv also takes the form of a trip to the National Opera for excellent value shows – being natural Europeans we got to see a European Gala and then on our second night a more local show – ‘Zaporozhian Beyond the Danube’ – we thought
we would stay for just the first half (it being in Ukranian with no translation) but it turned out to be quite good – a cross between opera, folk show and a pantomime! You will also get to enjoy a nice cognac at the half time interval.
The city centre is brimming with culture and (re-built) history, rebuilt as the
communists tried their hardest to destroy a lot of the churches to build their colossal Stalinist monuments and buildings. Fortunately for us, the wall fell and Ukraine made a concerted effort to rebuild many of its churches as beautiful as before. The corollary of this passion to eradicate communism is that you won’t see much of the communist memorabilia that you will find in other parts of eastern Europe – gates with the hammer and sickle are literally covered over with the stars of the EU, which just makes you want to peep underneath to see what is there. One final resting place of the Soviets is in Navodnitsky Park and The Motherland Monument, along with some other Soviet statues, these remain in a city cleansed of their moniker as they are monuments to the world wars. You can take a trip up the monument for yet even more great views of the city.
Metro
Just a short section but very worth it – Kyiv has a great network
of metro stops to get around the city at an incredibly cheap price – just 5 UAH – and you can ride to anywhere on the network. Some stations have that beautiful soviet design and dressing – especially Zoloti Vorota in the centre (by the Golden Gate); also Europe’s deepest metro station at Arsenalna at 105m depth and with rocket fast escalators that you have to take a running leap both on and off!
Fooooood and drinks Ukranian food is very very tasty, if you arrive
Ukranian food is very very tasty, if you arrive
around lunchtime, then make your first stop Opanas in Taras Shevchenko Park – set in the middle of the park with a rustic inside and great terrace for a sunny day you can enjoy potato pancakes and sour cream, varenyky (little dumplings) , Borscht (beet soup), pickled vegetables, ‘interesting’ mix of lard and bread and of course… Chicken Kyiv!!! All with a nice glass or two of Ukranian wine. An interesting dinner venue is Spotykach – specialists in vodka and in particular the horseradish vodka which goes just right with some caviar on toast. Here you will also get intersting modern takes on traditional cuisine, such as smoked herring eclairs, cuttlefish dumplings, and potato pancakes with porcini. If you want the full kitsch tourist experience the have lunch at Tsarskoye Selo – modeled on a traditional village, costumed waiters and waitresses and lots of space for all those tour busses… but funny to see (near the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra)
The tastiest food in Kyiv… is actually Georgian! You will find many great Georgian restaurants in the city, first among them is Nikala – named after famous Georgian painter, just past Kontractova Square, a discrete entrance and down some stairs to a
subterranean restaurant. A cosy place with fantastic food – chahohbili chicken (a chicken stew), shashlik BBQ, khachapuri “bread” (it’s a bit more like a pizza though), and the best on the list – Khinkali – Georgian dumplings – super large dumplings that you eat with your hands, holding the stem and eating the dumpling whilst balancing the drinking of the soup inside… yum! Georgia has been making wine for ~8000 years, so what better drink to have with dinner, we had Khvanchkara red wine (Georgians call it black wine), very nice, a little sweet and fruity, very moorish. Finish the meal with Georgian ‘vodka’ (but more like a grappa) – chacha, great name and once you’ve had a few you’ll be doing the dance too!
Another great Georgian restaurant that we went to was Chachapuri, a bit livelier and younger and with all the great food we had above. The good thing about eating at Chachapuri is that it is just around the corner from the legendary Palata No.6, a crazy underground
bar that needs to be seen (and found) to be believed – hidden round the back of a communist apartment, no signs or indications it is there, just pitch black and sinister looking stairs down… but push on and you will enter a bar that simulates a ward (“palata”) in a mental asylum with staff wearing medical outfits and cocktails being served in test-tubes. Special cocktails include the WWII, where you don an army helmet get set alight and then hit by a beer barrel…one must be crazy to pay for that… Other interesting cocktails involve being put in a straight jacket and ‘injected’ (through a tube in the mouth) with vodka! Needless to say a night here will make your next day a slow one!
Next time
So that’s about it for our trip to Kyiv, there is still plenty more to do that we will save until next time – first and foremost is the Chernobyl tour that will take you out to the doomed power plant and nearby villages… all allegedly safe! Another sight that we’ve been told is a must is the Mezhyhirya, home to former president Viktor Yanukovych – it is said to be stunning and suprisingly tasteful for the home of an exiled leader with too much money at his fingertips… but all this will be next time!
Next time!