UKRAINE - Keeping Warm With Mulled Wine

The temperature at midday today was a "balmy" minus 4 degrees and with me not drinking coffee I was very glad of the mulled wine stalls dotted around the city for the festive period. They kept my insides nice and warm throughout the day!

I started today by walking from my hotel to the St Sophia Cathedral. This is no longer a functioning church but is run as a state museum, consequently it commands a rather hefty (for Ukraine) £6.50 admission fee. The cathedral is also a UNESCO World Heritage site.

 

If you were expecting me to wax lyrical about the icons, frescoes and mosaics then readers you are going to be disappointed as the thing that caught my eye was the floor. The floor did not have flagstones or something similar, instead the floor was tiled with 19th century tiles made of cast iron! The first time I had every seen anything like that in a cathedral.

The other thing that stood out was this painting of Volodymyr the Great - I like the arist's style - Volodymyr was Prince of Kyiv and responsible for bringing Christianity to the Kievan Rus.

For a working cathedral you need to walk across to the stunning St Michael's with the Golden Domes.  

Behind St Michael's there is a large park which runs along the edge of the hill that central Kyiv is built on and gives good views of the Dnieper river. There is a cleft in the hill that a very busy main road uses to work its way down to the river. This has recently been spanned by a new footbridge that acts as a further viewing platform - it even has glass floored sections.

I hope this is looking sufficiently cold for you!

Independence Square is the main square of Kyiv and is where the protests or Revolution of Dignity took place in 2014, ultimately overthrowing the government.

Everything here is very much in Christmas mode, preparing for Christmas 2020 on January 7. This two Christmases thing is all very well but I have noticed one major problem with it. It is December 30 and I have not yet seen an Easter Egg! By now I would normally have consumed several packets of Cadbury's Mini Eggs!

Kyiv looks impresseive lit up after dark.