Kiev #2: Lavra Hills

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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 the small cafes on the edge of the square and then made my way over to the meeting point. When I got to the meeting point, there was no one there as it was still quite early, so I went for a little wander. I made my way through the subway/underground shopping mall to the other side of the road. Independence Square continues here and contains the Founders of Kyiv Monument and the Independence Monument. According to local legend, Kyiv was founded by three brothers, Kyi, Shchek and Khorvy, and their sister Lybid. The Independence Monument was built in 2001 to commemorate the tenth anniversary of Ukraine's independence. The monument is a victory column with Berehynia on the top. Berehynia is the female spirit in Slavic mythology and is believed to be the source of life and death. While I was admiring the monuments, I was approached by some touts/scam artists that had some kind of birds on chains on their arms. I immediately rebuffed them and they said the birds aren't scary. I was thinking it's not the birds I am scared of, I just don't want to be scammed. The guide on the tour mentioned later that these people were scammers.

I made my way back to the meeting point and there were a few people there, along with the guide. After waiting a few more minutes, we set off. Since the Lavra Hills are a little far away, we took the subway one stop. The Kiev metro system is pretty impressive. It is dirt cheap, the trains run very frequently and the stations have a bit of an air of grandeur to them. The stations are also deep, deep underground and the escalators going down take a while to reach the platforms, it reminded me of the Moscow metro. We alighted after one stop at Arsenalna Station, which is the deepest subway station in the world at 105.5 metres. As we exited the station, we came to the Arsenal Plant Workers Monument. The Arsenal Factory is one of the most famous and oldest factories in Kiev having been established in 1764. The monument commemorates the 1918 'January Uprising' that was organised by the Bolsheviks to sabotage the ongoing elections to the Ukrainian Constituent Assembly and to support the Red Army.

From the station, we headed down the street and the guide pointed out some restaurants that were good and the Roshen chocolate shop. I had bought some Roshen chocolate at the store the previous day and had really enjoyed it. The guide told us a bit about the owner of the Ukrainian confectionery manufacturing giant. The name Roshen comes from the owner's name, Petro Poroshenko, and more interestingly he was the Ukraine's fifth president, serving from 2014-2019. Further down the street, we passed the Salute Hotel. The hotel has a rather unusual shape and appears to be perched up in the air. It kind of looks like a cross between a boat and a UFO. As we continued our walk we came to the Monument to Ivan Mazepa, which was erected in 2010. Mazepa was a political figure and patron of the arts. During Soviet rule, he was alienated from Ukrainian history, but after independence his image has been somewhat rehabilitated, yet he remains a controversial figure. The monument is really beautiful. It is in the form of a globe with a bird perched on top spreading its wings. There are also traditional buildings coming out of the globe adding to the 3D effect. We crossed over the Bridge of Kisses and got some good views down to the river and across the city. I would love to come on a clear, sunny day as I bet the views would be spectacular.

The walk through the Park of Eternal Glory was nice and I loved seeing the golden domes of the churches as it really adds some colour on a dreary overcast day like this one. We came to the Monument to the Unknown Soldier. It is dedicated to the soldiers of the Red Army that were killed in World War II and is 27 metres high. It is a pretty sombre memorial. Just down from the memorial is the Monument to Ivan Kozhedub, who was one of the best fighter pilots in World War II. He was a Soviet, who has been credited with over 60 solo victories. It was bit annoying that when we asked our guide who he was, the guide didn't know who he was and didn't seem to care. We resorted to google to find out about him. After a quick break, we continued on to the Holodomor Genocide Museum. Holodomor was a man-made famine that killed millions of Ukrainians between 1932 and 1933. I really wished that I'd visited the interior of the museum, but I didn't have enough time on my trip. The monument on top of the museum is beautiful and the statue of the small starving girl made me feel quite emotional.

Continuing on, we came to the view point that gave us a great view of the Church of the Saviour at Berestove. A monastery was first recorded on this site in 1073 and historians date the church as being built in the 12th century. The church has been damaged and ransacked over the years and stood in ruins until the 17th century. In the early twentieth century, the church's medieval appearance was restored. I really liked the exterior of the church as it looked a bit short and squat. We walked around past the entrance to the Lavra Monastary of Caves, this is what a lot of people who come to the area come to visit. We walked past many beautiful churches, if one day I revisit this area, I will try to visit the churches. We came to another park area, the first part of which was filled with tanks. I liked that people were allowed to climb on them and it was fun to watch a family climbing all over it. In the distance, we could see the Motherland Monument. The statue itself is 62 metres high, but including the museum in the base and the sword extending from the statue's hand, it is 102 metres high. The guide told us that the statue is a bit out of proportion as it would fall over if it was to scale as the upper part would be too heavy. We also saw the Eternal Flame, which due to its shape reminded me of a UFO. I really, really liked the sculpture memorial to the fallen soldiers. There was a lot of detail in it and you could see the anguish on some of the sculptures' faces. It was also lightly snowing (more like sleet) at this point and it looked nice as it landed on the sculptures, but it melted very soon after landing. The tour finished here, so we decided to head into the The Great Patriot War Museum, which is beneath the Motherland Monument. The entrance fee was pretty cheap and we spent an hour or so looking around the different exhibits. I would love to go back and spend longer trying to soak in more information from the exhibitions. There was a lot of information to take in. Seeing the items from the recent conflict in the Crimea was saddening and interesting. The ambulance covered with bullet holes made it feel more real as when you see it on the news it is easy to distance from it. The exhibition about the Holocaust was also really, really sad. The table laid for a meal for people that would never return was really poignant. We also climbed to a hall within the museum in which the walls are covered with murals. I loved the colours and style of the murals.



After the museum, we were feeling hungry, so decided to head back to the city centre to a place that did Chicken Kiev. Call me stupid, but I had never really connected the dish Chicken Kiev with the city named Kiev. There are many different origins for the dish from many different places in Europe. Urban legend in Kiev attributes the modern dish, Chicken Kiev, to the restaurant of the Continental Hotel, which was a luxury hotel in Kiev that was built in the late 1800s and ran until the Germans invaded in 1941. Chicken Kiev was the restaurant's signature dish. In the late 1940s or early 1950s, the dish became standard fare in high class Soviet restaurants. The place we had chosen was called Rebra and Kotlety. It was an underground restaurant, but was light and airy with modern decor. There were a quite a few tables taken, but not too full. Since we'd viewed the menu online we already knew what we wanted. So after a quick look, we ordered the Mini Chicken Kiev Mix, which is four smaller kievs each with different flavours. However, we were gutted when the waiter told us that they were sold out. Instead we had to settle for two regular ones. We went for a regular Chicken Kiev filled with garlic butter and another filled with blue cheese and raspberries. We also ordered some roasted vegetables and mashed potatoes. I enjoyed a beer while waiting for the food to arrive. I had high hopes for the food, but was rather disappointed. The roasted veggies were good, but the mashed potatoes were meh. The kievs were shaped more like a baton/baguette, which made me think that the chicken was reformed rather than an actual piece of chicken. They were okay, nothing fabulous but edible. The regular was wasn't too strongly flavoured and the blue cheese one could have had more blue cheese in it.

The restaurant was just around the corner from where I'd been the day before. I liked walking through Kontraktova Square as everything was lit up. It looked really pretty. My full belly made the walk uphill a lot harder than it had been the day before. My evening was pretty low key as I spent a while looking around some of the shops near where I was staying and locating an ATM that dispensed larger amounts of cash. I also had to do laundry and pack up as I was not only moving to a different hotel the next day and had a tour in the morning, too.

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