The previous morning, I hadn't really had a good look out of the hotel room and since it was nice and sunny, I stood on the balcony for a bit taking in the river view. It was lovely. Since there was no options for breakfast we had to do it DIY style with some fruit, coffee and ghetto pre-packaged baked goods. We left the main city of Tiraspol and headed to Bender. We stopped on the way at a Sheriff gas station that was across the road from another Sheriff gas station, no need to turn and cross the road to get petrol. The gas station was in front of Sheriff Stadium where FC Sheriff Tiraspol play. The stadium was opened in 2002 and renovated in 2011. It looked very impressive. if only I liked football ... read more

30th Dec: We left Odessa and drove to the Trasnistrian/Moldovan border. The journey didn't take too long and I slept through most of it. The borders weren't too bad, just a bit tedious as the staff were too busy playing computer games to actually do any work. Also, because we were entering Moldova via Transnistria, our guide had to take all our passports to the Moldovan immigration booth to it stamped as we needed the proper Moldovan entry stamp or there would be problems when we leave Moldova. Transnistria, or Pridnestrovia as it is known in Russian, is an unrecognised, breakaway state. It is considered part of Moldova by the UN and only other breakaway states recognise it as its own country. The journey then took another hour or so to reach Tiraspol, the capital city. ... read more

It was an early start after a night of very little sleep. The walls of the hotel were paper thin and there were some noisy people partying during the night. I was tired, but it didn't dampen my excitement for visiting Chernobyl. The drive took about an hour and a half, maybe a bit longer and we stopped at a garage en route for some breakfast. I remember drinking a hot coffee and I think I had a sandwich of some sort. The drive wasn't very memorable and I don't recall seeing anything exciting. I did like that as we left the city and drove further into the countryside, it got a lot snowier. I love snowy landscapes, so I was happy to see this. We reached Dytyatky Checkpoint for entering Chernobyl and our guides went ... read more

I had decided to do a walking tour that morning. The one I had chosen went to Lavra Hills, a part of Kiev that I hadn't visited the previous day. I headed down to Independence Square (Maidan Nezalezhnosti), which is where the tour started and was a short way away from my hostel. The square is a central point in Kiev and has undergone many names changes over the years. It used to be surrounded by the buildings of the city council but now it is surrounded by shops, offices, cafes and restaurants. The square got its current name in 1991, in the aftermath the Ukrainian Declaration of Independence and the collapse of the Soviet Union. The square is a popular place for political rallies to be held. I stopped for a coffee at one of ... read more

23rd Dec: The journey to Lviv from Krakow can only be described as a nightmare. What should only take a few hours, ended up taking forever due to lazy border staff. While I would expect some queuing, a couple of hours max, sitting at the border for 8 hours is just ridiculous. I had to lol when after finally clearing Ukrainian immigration one of the bus drivers announced that we had entered the Ukraine. Then we stopped at a service station for about half an hour. I don't have the patience for these kinds of journeys. Finally, we arrived at the bus station in Lviv around two in the afternoon, when we were scheduled to arrive at 6 am. I couldn't be bothered to deal with the bus and had booked a taxi transfer to my ... read more