Ukraine itinerary - what do you think?

Try and allocate another day to Kyiv if possible, I would say...it's a great city with loads to do and see...you could then take a night-train on the 3rd day to Odesa and spend a couple of days there perhaps and then transfer on to Crimea and maybe split your time between Yalta and Sevastopol...

If you do a search here you should get some info about ferries to Varna as this topic comes up here from time to time and everbrite has commented recently if my recollection is correct......

Two nights means only one full day in Kyiv which really isn't enough time. At least three nights, or two full days.

There are several overnight trains to Odessa taking 8-10+ hours so that you leave at about 10 or 11 pm and arrive the following morning. Much nicer to take the train overnight and sleep than to fuss with getting to the airport, waiting for the flight, getting from the airport, etc. I am not sure that there is a schedule that gives the prices, but there are three classes of travel, all with berths for sleeping. Your Train - CIS train schedule will give you the schedules but not prices. The Ukrainian Railway site doesn't offer English, only Ukrainian and Russian but you can probably use a translator such as google for the latter.

Depending upon what your interests are and your timing, you might find that it makes more sense to take the overnight train from Kyiv to Simferopol for a few days and then head to Odessa because that is where the ferry departs for Varna. There will be overnight trains from Kyiv to Simferopol. These take 15 hours.

Transport from Simferopol to Odessa could be by slow overnight passenger train or by bus. Both take about 11-13 hours.

For the ferry, best to contact the company directly, it's UKR Ferry but I don't think you will find the March schedule online yet. In fact, I am not sure how often the ferry operates in winter, perhaps once a week.

Ruth

Andrewua has got nice albums from the Crimean mountains, here they are

http://www.andrius.org.ua/topics/photo/tracking-photo

Ten days is not a lot but I agree that you need at least three days for Kyiv, four would be better still. I spent six there last year and that was about enough.

You could easily spend ten days in the Crimea and want a whole lot more: Yalta, Balaclava, Sebastopol, Yevpatoria, Bakchisarai for the Khan's Palace (a beautiful place amongst rocky outcrops.)

Feodosia, thanks for the mention of my site. But the correct link is http://www.andrius.org.ua/topics/photo/trekking-photo</a> ;)

Joocy, I really recommend you to pay attention on the Crimea and Carpathians albums :)

If I had ten days to explore Ukraine, I'd spent 3 of them in Kyiv and the rest in Crimea. If you love mountains, you'll be able to appreciate the beauty of Crimean coastal ridges. If you aren't going to take a tent and sleeping bag with you, then plan to visit Sevastopol and Yalta in the first place, and make some treks in the suburbs. In March there should be a lot of water in waterfalls, so Uchan-Su is worth taking a glance at. Anyway, one week in Crimea is definitely not enough for any first-time visitor :)