Metro

Kyiv's metro system is surprisingly one of the best I've ever ridden on.  It might be old and it might not have air-conditioning, but the train stations are clean, they're beautifully decorated, the train comes every two minutes, it's fast, efficient, extensive, and cheap.  No matter how few or many stops you take on your one way journey, it's 2 Hyrvnia - which is $0.25 and you purchase blue plastic tokens to get through the turnstiles.  If you go one stop, it's $0.25, it you go 10, same $0.25.  Kyiv Metro has done a very good job of signage so even if you don't speak the language, it's very easy to figure out which side of the platform you need to be on.  There is a down escalator and an up escalator and they're fast and steep, the metro is quite a ways underground.

In one of my guide books there was mention to go to "Kyiv's Union Station", which locally is called Zoloti Vorota (Golden Gates) because it's the stop just next to the Golden Gate (which you'll need to wait till the weekend for me to blog more about, that's on the to do list).  Anyway - each train station is decorated artistically but Zoloti Vorota is supposed to be the most beautiful, so after lunch at the Japanese restaurant which is right next to the metro stop, I ducked down to see what all the fuss was about.




It was beautiful....and if I didn't agree to be back in fifteen minutes, I would have spent a little longer taking better pictures, but I only have a few minutes and it required two escalator rides down and two back up and each section is about 2 minutes each, so out of my 15 minutes, I had only about 7 minutes to snap away.