Travel Log

I'm in Amsterdam, waiting for my flight to Kiev. Of course, I'll actually be in Kiev by the time I post this, since I'm too cheap to pay six euro to use the airport internet. This is the time in my travel where I start thinking "I should have researched this more before I left." Things like what's the currency in the Ukraine and how easy is it to use ATMs and stuff like that. Instead, I learned useful things like it's really spelled Kyiv, and the city was founded by four siblings - three brothers and a sister, the eldest of whom was named Kyi or something close to that. Oh well. I will figure it out when I get there. The hotel is sending a driver to pick me up, and I'm sure they'll have ATMs or an exchange place at the airport. If not, I've got plastic.

I had a good weekend, as short as it was. I took an early flight on Friday, got back into Atlanta by 10 am, so I had the whole day home. I ran a few errands and then went home and painted my bathroom. I love it, it's an aqua blue shade called Weathered Glass, and it's bright and cheery. Eventually it will be my bedroom color as well, but I didn't have the time, the energy, or enough paint to do that this weekend. After I got cleaned up from that, I went to see Spiderman 3, which was not bad but about half an hour too long. I liked it alright, it was better than the second one, but not as good as the first. Then on Saturday, I had lunch with Scott and Jon before I headed back to the airport. So all in all, I packed quite a bit into my 24 hours at home.

Well, we should be boarding soon, so I'm going to shut this down. Ooo, the plane just pulled up and it's a Ukraine International plane. KLM never mentioned the carrier switch. Fingers crossed!

In Kiev

I made it to the hotel just fine, thanks to my escort Sasha, who is the hotel's concierge. The hotel is not open yet, should be by the end of the month to the middle of next month, but it's still quite nice. It's missing a few amenties, like tv, internet, reliable a/c, hot water, etc. but it will be lovely when they've finished it.

When I got in yesterday, it was about 3pm and hotter than hot outside. I got cleaned up and walked around for a few hours, saw some of the sights... although I'd be hard pressed to tell you what I've seen! Everything's in Ukranian, which is a Cyrillic language so I can't even begin to figure out what things are, since all the guide books/websites call them by their Romanized (I think that's what it's called) names. The St. Sofia Cathedral is across the street, but they were filming something in front of it, so I passed it by. I walked down to Independence Square along Khreschatyk Street, and then to the Mikhailovsky Zlatoverhy Monastery. There was a service going on, so that was quite interesting.

And now, I am so tired my eyes won't focus. So going to bed early tonight!