Besarabsky Rynok (Market), Kiev

Bessarabka market at Bessarabka Square offers all kinds of fruits, vegetables, cheese, meat, seafood, fish, caviar, spices and flowers. The sales people will lure you and drag you to try and buy their stuff and more often than not they will succeed. The range of goods is impressive - you can get all kinds of tropical fruits and every type of vegetable all year round as well as fresh meat, home made cheese, cakes, cream, milk etc. The negative is that especially imported fruits are very overpriced.Dont miss this place ..it s also well centered

What to buy: everything on food

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The most amazing fruit, veg and meat market I have ever scene, fruit and veg piled head high, the colours here are fantastic, hard to haggle if you don't speak the lingo, but it is as cheap as chips so no matter.
The meat counters are a bit awesome, the first thing I saw was a rabbit split down its stomach with the paws pinned back to reveal its innards. Not for the weak stomachs.

What to buy: Meat, fruit, vegetables, fish, pickles, herbs, spices and nuts.

What to pay: Not much.

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I have split my report on the Bessarabian Market (or Bessarabka Rinok) into two sections. This one is about the "sales feeling" and the part on the historic background of the place can be found in the "Things-To-Do" category. Now let's focus on the impressions inside the building.

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What to buy: Flowers and food products like fruit, vegetables, caviar, fish, meat, sausages.

What to pay: About supermarket price level.

This abundance of high quality products, and to prices quite reasonable, does permit to twist the neck to the western subjective propaganda who tells that the countries of the ex-soviet union are not supplied well ?
The products are here ten less expensive times than in France (twenty times less that in England or in Holland), and I found untraceable fruits at home (except if one can spend a fortune for it).
These products are accessible to all, and no to only one "elite" as in the countries of the old Europe.

In summer it is an abundance of vegetables very expenses and of high quality, and of the fruits of all ways. A lot of red fruits: currants, raspberries, strawberries, cherries, Morello cherries, grapes...

In winters, one finds products of the south of Ukraine (cabbages, potatoes, carrots...), and also of the products imported from Turkey (very affordable), or of faraway regions (Papayas and fruits exotic of Brazil, avocats and grapes of Israel...).

At Khreschatyk you'll find this enormous indoor market hall.
They sell all sort of food and drinks here. The prices are low!

The market is in the center of a place, to reach there without risking to make itself crush, simplest is to borrow the underground shopping mall that has been installed to this important crossroads.

Lenin's statue supervises the market, where one finds all fruits and vegetables for that one can hope, and also of the fine grocery store products : salmon, caviar, butcher's shop, cheeses, honey...