Hotel Life

Well it's been a whole week now that I've been in Kyiv and have started to settle into a bit of a routine.  The hotel we're staying in is called City Hotel and is quite close to the City Center.  It's a great location for my team, we have about a 10 minute walk to work, the other teams didn't fare as well.  For one team it's a metro ride and a car ride and a one way commute of nearly an hour.  Another team get picked up each day by car because they are a ways away as well and Flavia (Brazil) and Darren (Malaysia) could take the metro but have decided to walk the thirty minute commute each way. Kyiv, as you can see is quite a large city, but most of the key sites are in the City Center so we are in a really great location.  There are a couple of places that I'd like to see that will require taking the metro, but I'm getting better at reading the metro stations, now I just need to work on reading the street signs.  The picture on the right is our hotel and up on that top row of windows is where we have breakfast and where I took the pictures below, except one, the one on the bottom is the view from my room window.


It's a very modern hotel, only a few years old, built for when Kyiv held the Soccer World Championship a couple of years ago so all the amenities you could need or want are here.  There are some lovely views of the city from the fifteenth floor where we have breakfast and I enjoy just sitting up there looking around.  I've taken a few pictures of the views from there and one showing what our hotel looks like.  I'll spare you the pictures inside my room - it's the standard bed, desk, chair, etc., but we do have some nice closets.


The only downside to hotel life for a month will be the eating out for every meal.  I've toned town the breakfast to cereal and fruit and a cup of tea and will need to start doing the same for lunches and dinner.  The food is just amazing, it's all fresh ingredients and prepared well and restaurants take customer service and hospitality very seriously.  I think I'm going to have to investigate the gym that is on the second floor. 


One thing that I find very surprising is water.  Water isn't served complimentary in restaurants like in the States, you must order it and pay for it and you can get "still water" (aka plain bottle water) or "with gas" (which as the name implies is carbonated water).  The problem with that (have I already blogged about this?) is that a 16 oz. bottle of water is 33 UAH (local currency) and a large local beer is about 25 - 30 UAH - so it's cheaper, not to mention you get more of it, to drink alcohol then water.  Yes it's great if you're on vacation who wouldn't want cheap beer, but water is a vital necessity and I'm here for a month....

Yesterday we just had to shake our heads at the cost of alcohol vs. non-alcohol beverages.  Paul (Australia), Cheryl (Colorado), and I stopped at what is becoming our favorite watering-hole "7" and I didn't want a drink drink and I just cringe at the thought of paying for water at a restaurant, so I opted for Tonic Water, something a little more fizzy then water.  It wouldn't have been bad, about 15 UAH (about $2 USD).  Cheryl asked for the same and asked if she could have lime with hers.  OK, that sounded good, I'll have some lime as well.  When the bill came we were caught off guard because we were charged for the lime!  It was 8 UAH (half the cost of the bottle of tonic water itself for one lime wedge).  We couldn't believe it; I should have added some gin cause then I'm sure the lime would have been free.  I should have had the beer!