Ukraine, part one
I arrived in Kiev on the afternoon of Aug 27th. Funny thing, I never understood how close that place is until I flew there, the flight time from Helsinki was only 1 hour 20 minutes! That's practically next door!
Stayed 1½ days in Kiev at this point, spent half a day taking care of stuff like buying train & bus tickets, withdrawing money, getting orientated and so on. The rest of the time I basically walked around downtown; from one gorgeous church to another ( St. Michael's being my favourite), in parks, up and down Andrew's Descent (kind of a touristy street) and Podil district, a bit along Kreschatik (the main commercial street). I also dropped in the Chernobyl museum although didn't get that much out of it - every sign/label/article/video was only in Russian/Ukrainian and it was arranged in quite a chaotic way, but well, it didn't cost much to get in so I didn't mind!
Next I took an overnight bus to Lviv, about 9 hours away. Lviv is a really nice city, reminds me of several other Eastern/Central European cities that I've been to. Stayed in a nice hostel for a couple of nights, walked around the old town and lingered in their cafés, climbed up the stairs to Castle Hill for the view, went to the Art Gallery, walked to the lovely Lychakivske cemetary that my guidebook describes as "Pere Lachaise of Eastern Europe" - well, judge for yourself from the photos ;) Unfortunately, it was on my last day here that I woke up with a sore throat and stuffy nose so things would only go downhill from here for a while, but oh well.
Taking a 12-hour night train of Eastern European quality when you're sick is NOT fun, but it made me feel slightly better that one of my fellow passengers at the compartment had an even worse cold than I did, so I didn't have to be the only one sneezing and blowing my nose there... I slept surprisingly well though, probably at least 6 hours, a miracle in itself! Arrived in Odessa early in the morning, parked myself in a café on the main street and pretty much stayed there reading a book & drinking tea until I could get into my hotel room. Which is where I spent the next 24 hours, sleeping and resting and feeling crappy and frustrated. Can't possibly imagine a more exciting way to spend your time in Odessa, huh?!?!
The next day I had about 6 hours to spare between checking out of the hotel and taking another 12-hour overnight train, so I dragged myself to look at the famous Potemkin Steps and got stuck in huge crowds on the way (turns out that today was the annual Odessa City Day, which meant masses of people and very loud music everywhere). That's about all I can tell you about my stay in Odessa, but I'm sure it would've been a nice city under different circumstances...
I was issued an upper berth on the train and was slightly worried about it beforehand, since I honestly have no frickin' clue about how you're supposed to get up there - the locals, having probably done it all their life, just 'bounce' themselves up faster than you blink, but I'm a clumsy foreigner who'd really appreciate at least a step or two, if not even a small ladder, to help me with that. But then it turns out I didn't need to do anything; a friendly man who had the lower berth instantly offered to switch places with me, and then it also turned out that he was a seaman and spoke English, so we had a common language to converse in and had some nice chats. He'd been to Finland "at least 20 times or maybe much, much more" due to his job for a Polish shipping company, so yeah, it's a small world once again :D
The train took us to Simferopol on Crimean peninsula, arriving at about 7:30 in the morning. I bought another ticket for the slow electric train and sat in it for the next two hours, in order to get to my destination Sevastopol. The city used to be a base for Soviet Black Sea fleet so it has a lot of historical importance, and it's still used by both Ukrainian and Russian navy so you really do see all sorts of weird-looking navy boats floating around...
I'd booked myself an apartment for three nights, which turned out to be an excellent deal. I stayed here for about 35 € per night, right on the main street and a 20-minute walk from bus/train stations so it was really easy to go anywhere I wanted. Apart from the usual walking-around-downtown I didn't spend much time in Sevastopol at the end - mostly I was either resting in bed or trying to manage at least half of the day trips I'd planned and wanted to do.
So, the following day I took a bus to Yalta (2 hours) and from there on to Alupka (one hour, a veeeeerrrryyyy slow and kind of interesting journey passing by about 700 Soviet-era 'sanatorias' (kind of health resorts) and also a few sights (such as Swallow's Nest. In Alupka there's some sort of a palace & park complex that I walked to, but by the time I got there I'd used up practically all the energy I had, so I just gawked at the place a bit and then left, without even going in. Oh well. I backtracked slowly to the cable car that whisks people up the Ay-Petri mountain, stood in line for what seemed like forever to buy a ticket and then queued for another forever to actually get on the cable car. But the drive up was pretty amazing and so were the views on the way & from up there. The dry plateau we ended up in was one big tourist trap but still kinda cute, lined up with Crimean Tatar food & souvenier stalls that were nice to wander around. Eventually I found a minibus that headed down to Yalta on a serpentine mountain road, so I took that, instead of going back the same way (cable car and a slow bus). The second part of my plan was to 1) check out the Uchansu waterfall (allegedly the highest waterfall in Europe, or something?) on the way and 2) explore the city of Yalta itself, but by now I was absolutely knackered and the two-hour bus ride back to Sevastopol was all I could bear anymore, so I just headed back.
My second Crimean day trip was the same, kinda half of what I was hoping to do. I took a bus to Bakhchysaray, where you can visit Khan's Palace, Uspensky Monastery and Chufut-Kale cave city. Okay, so I did see the Khan's Palace, I almost managed the monastery too but the reason I didn't go in was that I'd forgotten to bring a headscarf (compulsory for women to enter), and I made the climb up to the cave city, but that was when I almost collapsed and simply had no strength left to actually go in and explore the place. So close, yet so goddamn far!! So I walked back down the mountain (the scenery was lovely anyway, at least I got to enjoy that!) and on to the bus, made it back to Sevastopol in early afternoon and called it a day. I had to completely miss the town of Balaclava as well, which seemed like a pretty and interesting place for a couple of hour's trip but... yeah.
Next day, we're talking about Sept 6th now, I took a bus back to Simferopol and stayed there for the afternoon & night. Again most of the time in my (rather fancy) hotel but I did walk around a bit, despite Simferopol not having a lot of sights to offer - it's a regular city, no more no less, and I only stayed there because I had an early flight back to Kiev the following morning.
Stayed 1½ days in Kiev at this point, spent half a day taking care of stuff like buying train & bus tickets, withdrawing money, getting orientated and so on. The rest of the time I basically walked around downtown; from one gorgeous church to another ( St. Michael's being my favourite), in parks, up and down Andrew's Descent (kind of a touristy street) and Podil district, a bit along Kreschatik (the main commercial street). I also dropped in the Chernobyl museum although didn't get that much out of it - every sign/label/article/video was only in Russian/Ukrainian and it was arranged in quite a chaotic way, but well, it didn't cost much to get in so I didn't mind!
Next I took an overnight bus to Lviv, about 9 hours away. Lviv is a really nice city, reminds me of several other Eastern/Central European cities that I've been to. Stayed in a nice hostel for a couple of nights, walked around the old town and lingered in their cafés, climbed up the stairs to Castle Hill for the view, went to the Art Gallery, walked to the lovely Lychakivske cemetary that my guidebook describes as "Pere Lachaise of Eastern Europe" - well, judge for yourself from the photos ;) Unfortunately, it was on my last day here that I woke up with a sore throat and stuffy nose so things would only go downhill from here for a while, but oh well.
Taking a 12-hour night train of Eastern European quality when you're sick is NOT fun, but it made me feel slightly better that one of my fellow passengers at the compartment had an even worse cold than I did, so I didn't have to be the only one sneezing and blowing my nose there... I slept surprisingly well though, probably at least 6 hours, a miracle in itself! Arrived in Odessa early in the morning, parked myself in a café on the main street and pretty much stayed there reading a book & drinking tea until I could get into my hotel room. Which is where I spent the next 24 hours, sleeping and resting and feeling crappy and frustrated. Can't possibly imagine a more exciting way to spend your time in Odessa, huh?!?!
The next day I had about 6 hours to spare between checking out of the hotel and taking another 12-hour overnight train, so I dragged myself to look at the famous Potemkin Steps and got stuck in huge crowds on the way (turns out that today was the annual Odessa City Day, which meant masses of people and very loud music everywhere). That's about all I can tell you about my stay in Odessa, but I'm sure it would've been a nice city under different circumstances...
I was issued an upper berth on the train and was slightly worried about it beforehand, since I honestly have no frickin' clue about how you're supposed to get up there - the locals, having probably done it all their life, just 'bounce' themselves up faster than you blink, but I'm a clumsy foreigner who'd really appreciate at least a step or two, if not even a small ladder, to help me with that. But then it turns out I didn't need to do anything; a friendly man who had the lower berth instantly offered to switch places with me, and then it also turned out that he was a seaman and spoke English, so we had a common language to converse in and had some nice chats. He'd been to Finland "at least 20 times or maybe much, much more" due to his job for a Polish shipping company, so yeah, it's a small world once again :D
The train took us to Simferopol on Crimean peninsula, arriving at about 7:30 in the morning. I bought another ticket for the slow electric train and sat in it for the next two hours, in order to get to my destination Sevastopol. The city used to be a base for Soviet Black Sea fleet so it has a lot of historical importance, and it's still used by both Ukrainian and Russian navy so you really do see all sorts of weird-looking navy boats floating around...
I'd booked myself an apartment for three nights, which turned out to be an excellent deal. I stayed here for about 35 € per night, right on the main street and a 20-minute walk from bus/train stations so it was really easy to go anywhere I wanted. Apart from the usual walking-around-downtown I didn't spend much time in Sevastopol at the end - mostly I was either resting in bed or trying to manage at least half of the day trips I'd planned and wanted to do.
So, the following day I took a bus to Yalta (2 hours) and from there on to Alupka (one hour, a veeeeerrrryyyy slow and kind of interesting journey passing by about 700 Soviet-era 'sanatorias' (kind of health resorts) and also a few sights (such as Swallow's Nest. In Alupka there's some sort of a palace & park complex that I walked to, but by the time I got there I'd used up practically all the energy I had, so I just gawked at the place a bit and then left, without even going in. Oh well. I backtracked slowly to the cable car that whisks people up the Ay-Petri mountain, stood in line for what seemed like forever to buy a ticket and then queued for another forever to actually get on the cable car. But the drive up was pretty amazing and so were the views on the way & from up there. The dry plateau we ended up in was one big tourist trap but still kinda cute, lined up with Crimean Tatar food & souvenier stalls that were nice to wander around. Eventually I found a minibus that headed down to Yalta on a serpentine mountain road, so I took that, instead of going back the same way (cable car and a slow bus). The second part of my plan was to 1) check out the Uchansu waterfall (allegedly the highest waterfall in Europe, or something?) on the way and 2) explore the city of Yalta itself, but by now I was absolutely knackered and the two-hour bus ride back to Sevastopol was all I could bear anymore, so I just headed back.
My second Crimean day trip was the same, kinda half of what I was hoping to do. I took a bus to Bakhchysaray, where you can visit Khan's Palace, Uspensky Monastery and Chufut-Kale cave city. Okay, so I did see the Khan's Palace, I almost managed the monastery too but the reason I didn't go in was that I'd forgotten to bring a headscarf (compulsory for women to enter), and I made the climb up to the cave city, but that was when I almost collapsed and simply had no strength left to actually go in and explore the place. So close, yet so goddamn far!! So I walked back down the mountain (the scenery was lovely anyway, at least I got to enjoy that!) and on to the bus, made it back to Sevastopol in early afternoon and called it a day. I had to completely miss the town of Balaclava as well, which seemed like a pretty and interesting place for a couple of hour's trip but... yeah.
Next day, we're talking about Sept 6th now, I took a bus back to Simferopol and stayed there for the afternoon & night. Again most of the time in my (rather fancy) hotel but I did walk around a bit, despite Simferopol not having a lot of sights to offer - it's a regular city, no more no less, and I only stayed there because I had an early flight back to Kiev the following morning.