Kam-Pod for short

  Kam”yanets'-Podil's'kyy, Khmel'nyts'ka Oblast', Ukraine
Saturday, June 20, 2009

 
After our excruciating 10-hour sweat-fest we fell out of the van gasping in the air and thankful to be at our destination, the little known town of Kamyanets-Podilskiy. The old part of this city is on a sort of rock 'island' or promontory, surrounded on all sides by a river in a canyon. The fantastic fairytale castle really completes the scene.

The Castle

 But we weren't interested in that upon arrival. We hurried to our hotel for a long refreshing shower. 

In the town centre

The next day we explored. The town is very quiet with not many tourists and it isn't very built up so it has a sort of countryside village feel. We had a good poke around in the castle that the town is famous for as there was lots to explore and virtually all the tunnels, passageways and crannies were open for exploration. 

Jie in the Castle's tunnels

At breakfast we had decided to stay another day at the hotel - the 7Days - it was a nice room overlooking the town and more importantly there was a spa and swimming pool that would be open in the afternoon.

Wedding Car

Plans went haywire shortly after breakfast as news arrived that Pasha, Ritchie's friend in Moscow, would be at a yacht regatta in Croatia when we were due to be in Moscow. Some frantic re-jigging on both sides had us arriving in Moscow a couple of days earlier so we could see him briefly before he flew out, but by now his hospitality had got going and we found ourselves guests with his grandparents in Kiev in a couple of days time (he would come and stay too), then staying with his parents in Moscow.


Now pressed for time we had to get a refund for the extra night we had booked just 20 minutes before, and prepare ourselves to move onto Lviv that afternoon where would now only be able to spend one full day.

Kamyanets-Podilskiy station

We arrived at the bus station nice and early for the 17:33 to Lviv as instructed by the receptionist/concierge at our hotel. Turns out no such bus exists. The bus station suggested we try the train station so we leapt in a cab and sped over there. No joy either, the next train to Lviv involved an overnight stay in Khmelnytskyi(??) before gettting us into Lviv about 7 hours before we had to leave again. So we scrapped that plan and instead hopped on the overnight to Kiev a day early. 

Our sleeper train to Kiev