Cold Kiev

Kiev, Ukraine is a five hour flight from Dubai, United Arab Emirates and Ukraine Airlines offered a reasonable price, so I visited this beautiful old city for a three day weekend. I arrived early on Friday and left on Sunday night, which was enough time for me to explore the capital city.

The food and architecture was the best and made the whole visit worthwhile. The weather was too cold for me though, I thought late March would be warmer, but it was mostly around 6 Celsius or 43 Fahrenheit, which felt like punishment to my blood that is acclimated to Arabian warmth...

St Volodymyr's Cathedral

I spent most of Friday drinking coffee to escape the chill and the coffee is very good! Lots of coffee shops to visit, each with unique character. 35 hryvia will get you a very nice latte and that is about $1.35. I will admit I mostly ate and drank my way through Kiev.

View from the Small Talk cafe.

Savory "varenyky" dumplings, like pierogi.

Cherry and cheese, sweet varenyky.

On Saturday I took a sightseeing tour bus which left from Independence square and drove by the historic sights in about an hour and a half. This is definitely the best sightseeing bus tour price I've ever had-- only $7.
The historic Jewish district looked really interesting, but I didn't get to explore there at all. Golda Meir the fourth prime minister of Israel hails from this neighborhood.
I intended to visit a museum or art gallery, of which the city has many. But I never made it in time and the line was too long for the Pinchuk Art Center, for which several people recommended I visit. http://pinchukartcentre.org/en/ Maybe next time?
The Opera hotel was the only splurge, but was worth it. It is a beautiful old historic hotel with a spa. Great location and really felt Ukrainian.

Historic Opera Hotel, a very good location.

Would I go back to the Ukraine? Definitely. I love Eastern Europe, the food, the people, the charm. Compared to Budapest or Prague, Kiev didn't seem as developed for tourists, though there was definitely high end retail and lots of people ready to speak English. I liked that the city wasn't overwhelmed with other tourists at this time, but that could be because of the Crimea issue. I wish for the Ukrainian people that things settle down peacefully there and Kiev stays a vibrant city.

Al fresco serenade.

St Andrew's church

Back to the blog

I took a big social media break for a while... The worst has happened, we have President Trump, so what can we do? I'm freaking out, but life needs to go on... We have huge billboards all over Dubai for his property investments and it feels as if the Dark Lord has descended... I want to think that good will prevail.. perhaps the US needs to hit rock bottom before we can recover from the mess we have made?
The property bubble is going to burst again sometime, so we can just wait and hope that the wrongs will be set right little by little. Through hard lessons and with attempts at education we can maintain a positive attitude and work towards a literate, thoughtful and peaceful society.
I will continue my work at my library in Dubai and help students to flourish into professional women who will influence the world with their dynamic intellect. God willing.
I plan to blog in 2017 and avoid the troubles. I will be making a lot of trips to amazing places, for business and for pleasure, and plan to share all of these on the Dubai Diary too.
If you receive this blog through an email notification, then thanks for hanging in there!

From Erik's meeting with President Trump.