Yeah, that title is pretty accurate.

I came to Kiev without a real plan and now I’m paying for it.

My “plan” for the day was to go on the free walking tour and that was about it.

The tour didn’t start til noon but I headed out of the hostel at 10am cause I wanted to head downtown to pick up some shorts cause, damn, it’s like 28 degrees out!

I decided to walk via Andrews Decent which is actually only a descent if you walk in the other direction.  For me, it was a mile long ascent (good little workout first thing in the morning).

By the time I reached downtown by Independence Square, I really needed those shorts – I was dying!

It actually turned out not to be a great place to find the store I needed so I hopped on the subway and went to a station the girl at the front desk had told me had a mall.

Anyway, long story short – I found the mall, bought the shorts but missing the walking tour as it was past noon.

Bummer.

Well, guess it was time for lunch.

I went to the same cafeteria style restaurant as I did yesterday.  This time I had as authentic of a Ukrainian meal as you can get – perogies and sausage.

After lunch I went back to the hostel to hang for a bit.  I realized there was actually another walking tour at 4pm to different parts of the city.

Alright!  This day wasn’t gonna be complete loss after all!

At 2:30 I headed downstairs to drop off my laundry before heading out.  Now, normally in a hostel you just drop off your laundry, pay some money (usually around 5 euros) and a few hours later your laundry magically reappears clean and nicely folded.

Normally…

Today after I paid, I was handed a scoop with laundry detergent in it.

D’oh!

I didn’t know quite what to do.  I definitely needed to do laundry today as I was quickly running out of clothes.  It was also gonna be tight for timing to get to the walking tour at 4pm.

Spurred on by the fact that the hostel doesn’t have a dryer and the wash would only take an hour, I quickly went downstairs and popped my load in.

At quarter to four my load was done and I raced upstairs to hang dry everything by my bed.

Tick, tick, tick…

A couple minutes later and I was racing out of the hostel to the subway station.

Sadly, I didn’t quite make it.

By the time I reached Independance Square, it was 4:10 and the walking tour was nowhere in sight.

Bummer again!

Well, this day was turning into a whole lotta nothing!

After sitting in a nearby park for awhile I decided to just head back to the hostel.

Today was just one of those days.  The timing was off and in the end I ended up not doing much.

Oh well.  They can’t all be golden days.

Tomorrow I’ll try to do the two walking tours I missed today to kinda make up for this day and then the next day is the day I’m really looking forward to – Chernobyl day trip!

Should be a fun couple days…