Day 6 – 9
It was nice just to be able to park the bike up at the hotel and relax. I had lost all the feeling in my bum and was quite stiff from doing so many miles. The hotel was lovely, and cheap. They spoke English as well which was a bonus. I had real, proper food, none of the fast food nonsense.
The hotel is just one or two roads from the main city centre. Although the city isn’t really a tourist destination it’s still an ok place to hang out and relax. There are some nice parks, the sea of course and the city centre to see. If I was to be honest you could see it all in a day, but this was as far as I was going east as Russia is only about 50km away and I wasn’t even going to try that, especially as I had no visa.
The days were spent walking around, hanging out with some very nice people and eating healthy too! I lost a couple of kg’s which is good and lived off salads most days. It was really hot and I got sunburnt a couple of time, I’ll never learn!
On Tuesday I went to Donetsk, a city about 2 hours away via a minibus taxi thing. Donetsk hosted some of the Euro 2012 Football games and is a pretty nice city. It also has a big University so lots of students making for a vibrant city. I enjoyed it there, they even have a lot of English signs which I like! There’s one thing not being able to understand another language, but when the characters are not even Latin then it completely blows my mind!
Wednesday I went for more walks etc and ensured I had many McD’s Ice Creams to keep cool!
Thursday was great. There was the Ukraine equivalent of an Autosolo event. Autosolo is basically a demonstration of driving skill against the clock. The person with the quickest time and least penalties wins. In the UK you’d see lots of Caterhams, Westfields etc there. Here in Ukraine you see Lada’s! They’re awesome. Even the two local taxi firms pitched up in the Daewoo’s and raced against each other. They do rear wheel drive Lada’s too which are simply fantastic. I want one!
After getting horribly sunburnt again, that evening was spent down at the beach, had a bbq and just a generally nice time.
An early night that night, as Friday morning I would start the trip back home.