Unfortunately the time has come to say farewell to this nice and interesting city we have stayed at. Today we will ride to … Well if you know galuschki, you will know where we will sleep for the next night 🙂 First we said goodbye to Inna’s family.            

We decided not to take the ringway around Kiev but follow the GPS and ride through the city as the E40 highway does. It was quite OK, we managed well in the busy Kiev traffic. If you ride through the city, you realise how big it really is. It was getting hot as well. We still had our windstopper layer on in the jackets.

 

After we crossed the bridge over the Dniepro river we made a quick stop to take this layer off and open the breather zips. The temperature was about 27 degrees Celsius now.

The ride of today was not too long, about 400km, and the road was good. We stopped about 100km before our destination at some road cafe. To our surprise they already had the famous galushki’s here. They tasted well!

In the meantime the temperature had risen to about 30 degrees, and around 5 pm we arrived at Poltava. The city is a bit comparable to the city where I am from I guess regards to size and population. About 300.000 people live here. I wanted to stop over here to visit the Poltava Battle History Museum.The only Ukrainian museum which is one of UNESCO historical museums listed to the world tourist itinerary, and gives you a lot of information about the Great Battle of Poltava.
Today it was too late to visit the museum, but we had contacted Marina, a friend of Larisa before, where we could stay for the night. So we rode to Marina and parked the bike.

It was very nice to get out of the warm bike suite, take a shower and head off for a cold beer! First the girls wanted to see some of the local sites, so I had to wait for the beer 🙂

 

Finally we found a good place near the local “White House” to get a local beer. I liked the beer, it was a bit like Hoegaarden but sweeter.

After some more walking, passing the local Lenin statue, we ended up add a very nice local restaurant called Козачка.

It was getting a bit late now, so we went back to Marina’s flat and called it a night… Tomorrow we will ride to Donetsk and see Erik and Larisa’s family!