In which Roz and Layla say farewell to Georgia and visit three countries in one day

by Roz

We decided to follow a tip of the tour guide from the day before for dinner, and thus hopped into a taxi over the river to a restaurant called “In the Shadow of Memphis”. Stepping inside, it was soon very clear that this was a much fancier place than we’d been to before and we sat down with enthusiasm to discover what fancy cheese pies taste like. The restaurant was huge but – despite the early-ish hour (we were both conscious that the next day would bring us a very early start indeed) – there were already enough people to make it feel bustling. Layla nabbed the good view, looking over the river, whilst I took the noble seat (the one which makes me responsible for signalling to waiters and which also means I cannot avoid making eye contact with musicians). We ordered a fairly wide selection (from bean pie, to beans in a pot to grilled vegetables) together with some lovely local red wine. And, though none of the dishes were novel to us, all were exceptionally delicious. It proved to be a very pleasant evening, with musicians and a lovely atmosphere. It was therefore without enthusiasm that we returned to the hotel early to attempt to get some sleep before our 4am start.

It’s best to pass over the early taxi ride, followed by the early flight and skip to landing in Kiev at 8ish in the morning. It was brilliant sunshine and Layla had told me that the airport was a mere 8km away from the city and thus our best option would be a cab. We thus hoped into a metered cab and sped off. 20 minutes later we were stopped in hideous traffic, the meter was reading a high price and we entirely uncertain as to whether the taxi was taking us somewhere mad or whether we were both just unable to guess what 8km feels like in a car. Given our taxi driver’s lack of English (and our own lack of Russian and Ukrainian) we were somewhat stumped, until I took the plunge, turned on data roaming and started googling. I established that, in fact, we had arrived in an airport some 40km from the city centre, and that the worst thing one could do on arrival was to pick up a metered cab. I informed Layla of just one of these pieces of information…

Having finally arrived in the main square, handed over pretty much all our cash (with considerable bitterness), we gazed around us at what was clearly a huge, pretty city with some trepidation (for which read sleepiness). We thus made our way to a café, where we hung out for a couple of hours, making good use of our books, the wifi, whilst also sampling (repeatedly) delicious curd pancakes. Feeling somewhat restored we were then ready to go on a (free) three hour walking tour. And what a brilliant tour it was! Our guide was a sweet guy, though somewhat overwhelmed by the numbers that had turned up for the tour that day. We saw amazing churches with fab golden onion domes, learnt about how the design of a hotel demonstrated the differences between Stalin and Krushchev, walked down cobbled streets and generally fell in love with Kiev. We muttered to each other as we staggered after the guide in beautiful sunshine that we should have definitely come on holiday to the Ukraine – a thought that was only appeased by the recollection that we have thousands of holidays to take in the rest of our lives, and we’ll probably manage to fit Ukraine in! I think the thing we both liked most were the statutes. Unlike the UK (where the focus is on war memorials), Kiev is populated with lots of lovely little fun statues. Of lamppost lovers, of trees with chairs, of cats, of cartoon characters and many more. Truly fab.

Which is not to say that by hour 2, I wasn’t fading and feeling in great need of a sit down, a cup of tea and some chocolate. Alas these things were not forthcoming (other than a Bounty which Layla managed to nab from a kiosk in passing) and so I wasn’t entirely sorry when the tour drew to a close. Before staggering to a café, we had spoken to the tour guide who had promised to sort out a cab for us back to the airport (at a third of the price it had cost on the way there) and we thus tucked into beers, and late lunch items (omelette for Layla, mozzarella and tomato salad for me) at an outdoor cafe with enthusiasm and considerable admiration of Kiev.

Back at the airport, we planned a sneaky helping of potato skins and cheese in TGI Fridays (the vegetarian food on Ukrainian Airlines being somewhat disappointing and consisting, consistently, of rice with either sultanas or mushrooms). Alas in this we were frustrated, and our potato skins were brought with cheese and bacon (and then brought back twice more, with increasing amounts of bacon having been picked off) and so we staggered, slightly resentfully, onto the plane, to eat…rice and mushrooms. We landed in Lisbon and I persuaded Layla that we should go straight to bed (she was up for a wander, but I felt 21 hours of being awake was more than enough for me). Which may explain why I am awake at an early hour this morning…