Arrived!

I ended my last post boarding the plane to Kyiv. The flight takes 3 1/2 hours, it is a 737-800 of Ukrainian International Airways and the return fare is never less than €300. Ryanair attempted to break the monopoly about a year ago and Kyiv Boryspil Airport agreed but the powerful owner of the airline overruled it.They even started taking reservations.

These flags, Catalunya, Spain and the European Union are flying outside the terminal, will they still be there when I return?
The flight arrived 30 minutes late, so by the time I got through Immigration which is very quick, and went up one floor to Domestic Departures, and got through security, I walked straight through the boarding desk to the bus waiting below. I guess I could have made it if I had been 15 minutes later but is is a little too tight for comfort. And I could have asked to jump the queue for Security.
I met my dear friend Marina at Meeters and Greeters and we spent a pleasant hour in the bar close by before I started to think that I should be heading for the hotel. We took a taxi together and dropped Marina off at her home which is not far from the airport.
I had a meal in the hotel and they gave me a free ticket for their disco next door. By now it was well past midnight but I was an hour behind so I went back to my room to change into my trendy girly gear and spent about 30 minutes in there. The sound level was enormous so I couldn´tstick it for very long. In any case it is not music, it is DJ generated beat. The girls were beautiful and smartly dressed and the guys rather shy and wearing the kind of clothes that they would wear in the street. I hesitate to generalise but in Ukraine I often see this contrast between the sexes.
 I didn´t sleep well. At about 5am I was woken by a loud crash. For a moment I had no idea where I was. I think it was the disco emptying its bottles into a refuse bin in the courtyard outside. It took me a long time to get back to sleep ad I was woken again by stuff being emptied into the bin. I complained in Reception but they can´t change their room. I asked that they are quiet but I can´t depend on it. It´s terrible, going to bed half expecting to be woken at 5am with breaking glass.
I complained bitterly at Reception next morning and they promised to talk to the disco. I had some breakfast and went back to sleep for an hour and felt much better. I never need much to catch up. Marina and I arranged to meet outside Universitat Metro at 2pm, I was expecting to be eating somewhere, she told me that we going to a place with plasticine but first we were going to a fair. On the way we passed hand-prints of various celebrities. I have attached various photos. The fish were from the local river and were still alive, so obviously air-breathing, like lobsters. I decided to give that a miss. They were very strange-looking to me.

After the fair, we walked back towards the hotel and, very close to it in Shumska Street, we dived in through an unmarked door, down some steps and Marina knocked on a door. There was a small sliding window and a man's face appeared and demanded a password which fortunately Marina had prepared. The door opened into the most beautiful restaurant. It was if they didn't want customers. The walls were covered in thousands of sculptures in plasticine. We took a seat and Marina ordered for us because the menu was all in Cyrillic.

 We were given our plasticine kits and I chose to create a Union Jack. I had to look it up in Google Images because I couldn't remember exactly how it went. The food was brilliant, Marina chose salmon soup for me, we shared a piece of roast chicken and chips and finally had cherries in a dough cover. We also had ginger tea. The bill was 400 uah which converts to about 13 euros. This is typically Ukrainian, it was so quirky. And one could almost imagine in advance that they didn't take anything as normal as a credit card! The food was absolutely top-class.
By now it was about 5pm and Marina wanted to go home but before that, we continued down Shumska Street to Ave Plaza shopping mall which has been updated since I was last here. There is now an Intimissimo and Calzedonia. Marina wanted to look at the shops so we visited Intimissimo and one or two less expensive shops on upper floors but left without success. She took a taxi home and I walked back to the hotel, had a beer and then spent some time in the room before eating later in Abajour which is the hotel restaurant below ground. I thought about going to the disco again but it was 11pm, a good time to sleep and too early for the disco anyway!