Kiev, Ukraine — WRENEE

Last September while visiting Moscow, my boyfriend Jason and I made spur of the moment plans to visit the Chernobyl nuclear disaster exclusion zone in Ukraine. A flight from Moscow to Kiev, Ukraine is only 1 hour 20 minutes (or at least it was up until the month following our visit when sanctions halted all nonstop flights between Russia and Ukraine).

Prior to our arrival in Kiev I was googling to find out how safe it was to visit Kiev, not entirely sure what I was getting ourselves into. Having just come from Russia, and there being a tense political situation between the two countries… my Russian friends thought I was crazy to want to visit Ukraine, “Ukraine? Why would you go there?? There’s a war there”. Travelers on online forums explained an entirely different situation on the ground in Kiev, where life was normal and completely safe, with the only sign of the country’s political problems being evident in the severe deflation of the currency, the Ukrainian hryvnia.

We experienced just that— Kiev was safe, people were very friendly and enjoyed talking to us (so much more so than in Moscow), and everything that we purchased; from our comfortable AirBnb, to meals, snacks, and taxi fares— were absurdly affordable when converted from USD. My only advice about visiting Kiev is to go there longer than 1 1/2 days! There was a lot that I would have liked to see that we missed out on because we had planned such a short trip and spent our only full day in Ukraine exploring Chernobyl.

Visited September 2015

Photos by Renee Lusano and Jason MacDonald, shot on Contax G2, Canon 5D MkIII.

I was happy to see that the Kiev snack choices included exotic flavors of Lay’s potato chips... a half ironic guilty pleasure of mine when I travel.

Our favorite restaurant that we found in Kiev and ate at twice: Вареничная Катюша, a cute (and very very cheap) 1970s themed diner, this entire meal cost about $9 US (desserts not pictured).