I always like to wander away from the tourist path when I visit new places.

In Ukraine it was no different.

We stayed at Tourist Hotel across the river and just outside of the city centre. It was very good value and a superb hotel offering us everything we needed. I’d highly recommend the place especially given that it’s right next to a Metro station that gets you into the centre within minutes. Alternatively an Uber cost us only €3 one night!

Because the hotel is located on the opposite side of the river from the city, this is where a lot of the locals live.

It was a none English part of town and offered a bit more of an insight into the culture of Ukraine.

As always we took a walk around the area finding ourselves in the local markets where we bought some food we couldn’t pronounce the name of and a few too many pairs of socks!

We also managed to walk for miles landing us in a park nearby as the sun finally started to emerge.

I love to walk around parks so we had a nice relaxing day busy doing nothing.

After a little while we hopped on to the Metro and headed to Seiklar Rope Park in hope to do a bit of climbing. Turns out that Ukraine is not the best place for doing this when they don’t speak English and you can’t understand the instructions! So we went back on that idea very quickly.

Alternatively, on our way to get here we had to walk through some beautiful peaceful woods full of red squirrels where we got to enjoy a nice walk we wouldn’t have had otherwise!

We reached what we can only assume was some form of summer camp. It was a great place to relax and enjoy the sunshine.

I even tried some form of strange Whiskey ice cream..

It was a very random day of walking around and just not really doing anything other than enjoying the sun and seeing a bit of Kiev that perhaps most that visit the city don’t really venture to.

Always nice to find the greenery in each city..