For French pastries and desserts, there is the Wolkonsky Patisserie & Café, in the Premier Palace Hotel.

For top-shelf Georgian, Kazbek is the place to go

Ikra, on Saksa_ganskogo, has excellent seafood, along with an oyster bar and a fine slogan: if it's fresher, it swims.

For a quiet few hours, decompress at Babuin, a bookstore, café, and bar on Bogdana Khmelnytskogo.

Kiev's most authentic Ukrainian dining experience is situated in a wooden houseboat docked on the Dnieper. The waitresses wear traditional Ukrainia

Among the many new clubs, bars, and restaurants in Kiev, none is hotter than Decadence House. The café and club is black inside, an Art Deco chambe

The bar, on European Square, is a loud, carnivorous club.

Standards such as Swan Lake and La Bohème are performed with regularity at the Taras Shevchenko Ukrainian National Opera House, a grand structure o

The name, appropriately, means "shot glass" in Russian.

For Ukrainian art, visit the RA Gallery, on Bogdana Khmelnytskogo.

Viktor Pinchuk, a steel billionaire and Ukraine's second-richest citizen, recently opened the Pinchuk Art Centre, on Krasnoarmeyskaya, a contempora

The monastery began in a cave in 1051, with monks living in a series of underground compartments. Over the centuries, it expanded across many acres

In Kiev's center, on Khreshchatik, the Passage complex carries high-end Russian and Ukrainian fashion designers such as Alena Akhmadulina, NB Poust

In Kiev's center, on Khreshchatik, the Marki bazaar carries high-end Russian and Ukrainian fashion designers such as Alena Akhmadulina, NB Poustovi

For Ukrainian art, visit the Kollekstia Museum, on Pankivskaya.

To see how locals shop, there is Bessarabsky Market, in the city's center. Here, women in head scarves sell fruit, vegetables, caviar, fish, meat,

For dancing along with your drinking, Barski has a terrace that affords great views of central Kiev.

For a stiff drink, your best bet is the Balcony Bar at the new Hyatt Regency, on Tarasova, which looks upon the gold-leafed St. Sophia Cathedral an

Have a drink on the frist floor of Arena City, which brews its own beer.Upstairs, the club's dance floor is packed with Kiev's elite party-goers. T

The market is set on a downward-spiraling street of the same name, which since ancient times has formed a direct route between Kiev's aristocratic