Kiev, Ukraine
Saturday, December 29, 2007
Arno writing: Our new apartment is literally just below the brand new Hyatt in Kiev. We spent Saturday touring two of the beautiful churches close by. The first church was St. Michael's Cathederal. St. Michael's is a gold-domed cathederal and named after Kiev's patron saint. Most of the older churches here have gold dome roofs. There are beautiful frescos and paintings of bible stories on the inside. We walked the grounds of St. Michael's and then headed across the street to St. Sophia's Cathederal. St. Sophia's is Kiev's oldest standing church. Many of the mosaics are original and date back to around 1017. You have to pay 40 cents per person to enter the grounds here. This church and it's grounds are considered a museum now. We paid an additional $1 per person to walk up the 76 meter high bell tower and $4 per person to enter the cathederal. The walk up the bell tower is not for the faint of heart or people afraid of heights. One does get a beautiful view from the top, but it was windy and cold
. The cathederal was beautiful and there were "cut outs" which showed what the original floors looked like. We paid $1.00 each to go to the "bakery". It used to be a bakery, but is now a very small museum with religious artifacts.
We scored some seats at the Kiev Opera House to see the Nutcracker. They only had a few seats left and we paid $4 a piece for our seats. Unfortunately, the seats were on the next to the highest balcony, and they view was not good. Decorative pillars blocked some of the view as well. The Opera House reminded me of Macon's Grand Opera House on the inside. It is a beautiful theater on both the inside and out, but don't get the top balcony seats if you go.
Fireworks late into the night woke me up at night. It seems the shoot off fireworks every night.
