Kiev

We spent 2 nights and one day in Kiev.  My friend Lena and her man Sasha were our gracious hosts, and showed us around.  As far as long legs go there were plenty, but here we concentrated on looking at churches.   The weather was kind enough to give us a very warm morning/afternoon, and the insane rain started only after we bought some groceries to cook dinner.  The rain continued for about 2 hours, which is apparently the norm with the climate change and all.  It rains one day, and is super-hot the other.   We were lucky to walk around in about 28-30C weather.  Last summer temperatures reached high 40s, and people would take vacations to Egypt to cool down.

Anyway, Kiev and Dnepr were great - check out the latest pictures.   We’ll consider coming back to Ukraine on our way back down, and visiting Odessa.  We hear there are some sarcastic people over there worth checking out.

Now we’re on the plane to Tallinn via Riga.  Had to get up at 5:30am to make this flight – our nights are getting progressively shorter since we left the comfort of Julie’s relatives’ home in Dnepr.  Orbitz failed to let me know that the price of the ticket did not include checked bags, and that it’s going to cost us an additional $45 per bag.  That’s 30% of the ticket price (we only check my backpack.)  If anyone sent complaints to Orbitz before, let me know what works because I want to yell at them a little bit.

Well, hopefully Riga’s airport will have Wi-Fi, and I’ll be able to upload this post along with pictures there.  (It does)


And here are the pictures.