Finally, our friend Peter has arrived and joined our tour in Kyiv – the capital city with an ancient and proud history. The city stands on the Dnieper River just below its confluence with the Desna. As the center of Kyivan Rus, the first eastern Slavic state, 1,000 years ago, it...
We made one hour stop at Carmelite (Roman Catholic) monastery with impressive brick walls. It was founded in 1482 as a Lithuanian fortress. The 16th-century walls survived, as does the Church of Our Lady, which lords over the complex, dates to the 17th century. The French novelist Honoré...
Today tire valve at our rear tire flew out, so we spent one hour changing the tire and then another two hours changing all air valves as prevention of future troubles at a local shop (1800 UAH). In the late afternoon, we parked just next to Medzhybizh Castle (entrance 50 UAH). It was...
Stunning Kamianets-Podilskyi fortress is a former Ruthenian-Lithuanian castle and a later three-part Polish fortress from the 14th century. It sits on top of a peninsula carved out by the winding Smotrych River, forming a natural defense system. Next to it is a historical town located...
Ornate golden domes of Holy Dormition Pochayiv Lavra rising up from the surrounding plain, it is a beacon of Ukrainian Orthodoxy (Moscow Patriarchate) on the edge of a largely Ukrainian Catholic region. The complex of the monastery includes the Assumption Cathedral, Trinity Cathedral, and...
Lutsk you will find in northwestern Ukraine, on a defensive site at a bend in the Styr River. It was a tribal settlement, perhaps of the Luchanians, as early as the 10th century. The first known record of the settlement dates to 1085. Lutsk later became a part of the principality of...
We spent three days in the largest city in western Ukraine waiting for our friend Peter who did not arrive. The city was named in honor of Leo, the eldest son of Daniel, King of Ruthenia, it was the capital of the Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia from 1272 to 1349. Lviv was the center of the...
On our way to Lviv, we made a short stop at the Museum of folk architecture and way of life in the Precarpation region (entrance 20 UAH) with our friends Roman and Andrey. The open-sky museum is a structural subdivision of the National preserve “Davniy Halych”. It is on the territory of...
We spent two days in the capital of Prykarpattya – Ivano-Frankivsk. It received its current name in 1962 when during the celebration of 300 anniversary of the city’s foundation, it was renamed in honor of the outstanding Ukrainian writer Ivan Franko. By that time the city had been...
President of the , who we met in Uzhorod, sent us an invitation from a famous retro cars collector Roman Slobodyan to visit him at his Retro Cars Museum near the Ivano-Frankivsk. He showed us his private collection of cars and motorbikes which he got and renovated throughout his life...