The second full day in Kiev was marked with some more “local” excursions. The day started off with a trip across the street (literally) to see St. Andrew’s Church. It’s one of the older churches in Kiev, and the namesake of the street where the apartment was. As I mentioned in my comments for the day’s post, despite the ornateness of this Baroque era church, this seemed like one of the more “accessible” sites we visited.

After St. Andrew’s, we wandered over toward the city center in order to see the St. Sophia Cathedral complex. I had originally thought that all the street vendors of Saturday and Sunday were more of a weekend and/or Kiev Days thing; nope. They are always there, day in and day out. Some have formal stands or kiosks, but a lot of people just set up a card table, lay out their wares and start selling. This isn’t the case everywhere in Kiev, but since this was more of a tourist area, it only made sense. (I can’t imagine doing that for a living; some of the days were pretty hot, but people would be out there the entire day, often not packing up until 7 or 8 pm.)

Honestly, after seeing the Lavra, visiting St. Sophia was a bit superfluous. It was different, still amazing, and not nearly as large as the Lavra complex. I think if we had actually gone into the cathedral it would have been something a bit more special; I’ve seen some photos and the inside does look amazing. Plus I’m pretty sure I was wearing pants that day. Even so, I don’t think cameras were allowed in the cathedral, so even if I’d gone in, I wouldn’t have been able to share it. Oh well. (We did visit the House of the Metropolitan, which was interesting enough — and also required a separate admission.)

So here are the first batch of photos for the second day. There was a rain storm about halfway through the day, so it was easy to separate things. At least we were closer to the apartment when the rains came this time; on the day before, we had just left the Lavra and were walking along the street when the winds came up and the rain quickly followed. This time we had a little more warning, didn’t have as far to go, and I had my umbrella handy.

St. Andrews and St. Sophia