After our day of waiting, and also due to the fact that our Kyiv holiday had been cut short, we decided that we needed a day of walking. The apartment that we were staying in was in a quiet area but still quite central to the places that we wanted to see in Kyiv.

A 500 metre walk around the corner and down the street led us to the House With Chamaeras (or Gorodetsky House) which is an amazing art nouveau building situated across from the president of the Ukraine’s office. We marvelled at the structure and took some pictures before setting off to find Independence Square. There was a light dusting of snow and icy sleet (and sometimes snow) was falling from the sky, making it all the more wonderful to walk around in.

Independence Square (Maidan) is quite magnificent and it is significant because it is the site of the peaceful protests that progressed into violent clashes and fires ending in the 2014 Ukrainian Revolution. There’s a powerful documentary on Netflix called Winter On Fire that informs on this event.

Across from the square, one of the massive structures housed a MacDonalds, so we decided that we might try a Ukrainian Big Mac. So off to MacDonalds we went. Delicious!

Bellies full, we now wanted to find St Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery. This church offered refuge to the protesters during the uprising in 2013, closing its gates to the corrupt police brutality. Although the church looks stunning in the pictures, it is hard to describe the beauty of it in real life. Quite breathtaking.

We walked around the church and found the furnicular and Volodymyr Park. From here we could see the mighty Dnieper river.

Instead of taking the furnicular we decided to walk to the Christmas markets … obviously sponsored by Coca Cola. There were mulled wines, hot soups, lots of meat BBQs, trinket stalls and people dressed as St Nicholas or other characters walking around to earn money.

As we walked through the markets St Sophia church loomed in the background. A very picturesque and festive atmosphere.

Once again, due to Wizz Air cutting our Kyiv holiday short, we could not take the tour to Chernobyl that we would have liked to. So we settled on finding the Chernobyl Museum instead. We made our way through the cobbled streets of old Kiev toward it and stumbled on some lovely flea markets. The icy rain had gotten a bit heavier at this stage and we decided it was time for a dry off and a beverage! We warmed up with hot wine, beer and vodka in a little cafe outside St Andrews church.

We set off again and walked to the museum but realised that we were hungry. So just around the corner we found a restaurant. Michele and Scott ordered borsch with garlic buns, and Teresa ordered chicken noodle soup with meatballs. We accompanied our meals with some Ukrainian chardonnay.

We finally made it to the Chernobyl museum! It was very informative and grim. There was a lot of photos and information on display and we were able to hire handheld audio guides so we could listen in English. The information was very comprehensive.

After leaving the museum, we headed to the Metro and caught a couple of trains to check out some of the famed Ukrainian underground. We got off at one station and took an escalator of over 700m up to street level. It seemed like it would never end but also was quite fast. Michele and Teresa had to grip the rail and not look back, as vertigo took hold.

Our stomachs began to grumble and it was now time to find the restaurant we had picked for dinner. We needed wifi to update our maps so we found a Jaegermeister bar hidden down some steps on the street. We were the only customers there. They were very accommodating, even giving us their charger to charge our phones a bit. A beer each and then on our way again.

Full darkness had set in by now and a fair bit of snow was falling from the sky. We found the restaurant that we wanted: Verenyky Spoiled Halia, recommended by our AirBnB host as traditional Ukrainian food. Verenyky is the Ukrainian version of pierogi and we were excited to try it! We ordered up big and ended up with a table full of dumplings, potato pancakes and vodka. Smacznego! This restaurant was much cheaper than last night’s, despite over-ordering on the vodka ‘tasting’.

It was now time to retire for the evening, tomorrow we go to Minsk. Надобраніч!