Ukraine - Kyiv

Terri has just done a superb job of describing the city so I will relate personal anecdotes. The hotel people in Chernihiv said the only viable way to get back to Kyiv was by bus and the bus stance was right around the corner from the hotel front door. Two tickets were 40uah. What no one told us is that the bus stops at the end of a subway line on the outskirts of the city. When the bus stopped I got our bags from the baggage compartment which had leaked water all the way and my bag was faily soaked, my wife's a little bit. We had no idea where we were or how to get into the city. After wandering around in the rush hour crowd we found a taxi. Wife had written the address of the Ibis hotel in cyrillic and I showed it to the cabbie. He showed me on his phone 160uah. Deal! We got to the hotel which is on Shevchenko bulvar, and signed in for seven nights. This was the most expensive hotel, per night, we stayed in the whole trip. We had lunch and with some help from the front desk began exploring. One of the guide books were using said there are no TI offices in Kyiv. Wrong. There is one in an old wooden trolley car in Shevchenko Park. There are others in portables that were closed for the season. Walking down to the churches an older (than me) fellow was dragging a piece of tape on his shoe. I put my hand on his arm, explained what was going on, and helped him remove it. He said, "Where are you from?". We said Idaho, he was from Pennsylvania but was originally from Ukrains. The Nazis had taken him to Germany when he was 11 1/2 as a slave laborer. The last two days in Kyiv were getting rainy and cold so we had to spend some hours at the hotel during the day. We had made reservations at the Boryspil Airport Hotel for the night before. The airport is a long, long way out of town. We got off at one of the terminals, got on the bus that circles the terminals and hotel and were at the hotel very easily.