KIEV

I had a long stopover of 10 hours on my way to Baku, Azerbaijan.

This what I have done during the day while waiting for my connecting flight.

It was not my first time in Kiev, I have visited Ukraine in 2012 when I went to Chernobyl, you can read more here.

I decided to use these 10 hours to cover some Soviet architectures that I have missed the previous time and to see again some of the spots I liked before.

Kiev is one of my favorite cities, great places to visit and it is super easy to get around with the metro and walking.

My flight arrived early in the morning, passport controls were pretty swift and I decided to take the new train that connects the city center to the airport. The train is not super frequent, around one every 30 minutes but it is super cheap at 80 UAH each way. The journey takes approx. 45 minutes.

Once in the city I started exploring the places I had on my list and these are some of those:

1. Hotel Salyut
Beautiful Soviet architecture with geometric shapes. At the bottom of the building, there are some nice decoration with stars. From this place, I then walked to the Motherland monument

 

2. Motherland monument
I had visited this on my previous trip but I wanted to go back. It is a great complex with many Soviet sculptures and a couple of museum with Soviet army vehicles and airplanes.

 

3. Kiev Metro
This is great to move around and very cheap. It is a Soviet-style metro system so many stations are really impressive with their structures and decorations.

4. Institute of Scientific and Technical Information
Another great Soviet-style building, looking very futuristic with that UFO shaped structure.

 

5. Kiev crematorium

 

The rest of the time I just walked around enjoying the city and I made my way back to the airport using the same train I used in the morning.