Golden domes and Soviet Pomposity

We arrived in Kiev, safe and sound. We had a very shaky flight with Aeroflot, especially the landing in Moscow. Phew we made it! Kiev is nothing like we expected it is beautiful, clean and hilly, very hilly. The first day we went on a bit of a walking tour around the city, taking in some of the golden domed churches and monasteries and Soviet sculpture, quite a contrast really. The photos we included are the Caves Monastery churches and only a small part of The WWII monument. Unfortunately we couldn't capture the piped music playing what sounded suspiciously like old Soviet anthems.
On Saturday we got a bit more in depth with a few sites such as the Caves Monastery and Chernobyl museum. We also witnessed the mindblowing amount of brides traipsing through the city with their entire wedding party to be photographed in front of the city's monuments. At one place we saw at least 40 brides.
Other than that we are just soaking up the idea that we somehow are in Ukraine and just chilling out with the occaisional 600ml bottle of beer that the locals drink on street corners from 7:45 at earliest sighting.
Today we are stocking up on supplies for a 15 hour train trip to Simferopol in Crimea, just in case we hadn't spent enough time sitting on our bums in the last week. it is a sleeper though so hopefully we'll spend most of our time asleep.
We can't believe it's been a week already. We've been lucky to hear from everyone back home, it makes us feel so close to everyone still.
Till next time....