Kyoto Park

Leave the metro, turn left and cross the road and you're there. Kyoto Park was laid out in 1972 to mark the friendship between Kyiv and Kyoto, its sister city, and it's a genuine piece of Japanese landscaping rather than a few trees with a name attached.

Time your visit if you can. The sakura alley is the reason to come and it's at its best in early May - the cherry trees are a bright pink and the park fills up accordingly. Spring is the obvious season, but summer works too and it'll be quieter.

What to See

The garden is the highlight, with the flowering cherry trees running down the alley. Look for the stone of honourable sitting and the guardian stone, and for the stone statues dotted through the park, each carrying the name of the person who carved it. There are stone seats of honour in the garden as well.

Beyond that it's trees, bushes, cut grass and paths, and it's a good place to do very little for an hour. The park backs onto a major road but sits far enough back that you don't get much traffic noise.

It's small and it's free, so it works better as a stop on the way somewhere than as a day out on its own. If you're in the north of the city with an hour spare, it's a much better use of the time than another shopping centre. Kyiv in Miniature is a few stops back down the red line if you want to make an afternoon of this side of the river, and Feofaniya out past the far end of the blue line is the one to pick if you want a park that fills a whole day.