Day 2 - First day in L'viv

Sunday, Oct. 10 - Сьогодні, ми прибули у Львові. 

The taxi ride to the airport and the flight itself were not memorable  both were short and pleasant enough, although I did get to watch "Scooby-Doo" and eat bacon-flavored crisps while waiting in the airport lounge.

After getting off the plane, we were ushered into the customs line by some rather surly military types (I tried to take a photo of the airport but was scolded. Whoops.). After passing through customs, we were met by our tour guide, Oleksandr Ruchko (a.k.a. Alex)and a driver he'd procured to bring us to our hotel. On the way, we chatted about our plans for the week and confirmed a rough itinerary. 

Grand Hotel

The Grand Hotel is really rather grand...

Alex left us at our hotel, and we checked in - our official tour was to begin the next day. We went off in search of lunch, and walked to a cafeteria-style place that Alex had suggested. However, when we got there the line was very long, so we skipped it and searched on our own. We found a chain restaurant called "New York Street Pizza," which actually had pretty decent pizza. I mean, we figured that we'd have plenty of opportunity over the next six days to eat "authentic" Ukrainian food, so why not have something a bit more familiar?

After lunch, we set out for some unstructured sightseeing. We went across the main avenue, Prospect Svobody/Проспект Свободи (Freedom Avenue) to the market square, Ploshcha Rynok/Плошча ринок, which, unlike the market square in Warsaw, was not reduced to rubble and rebuilt after WWII. This is authentic 18th Century architecture.

Statue of Taras Shevchenko

public transit, L'viv style

sightseeing trolley

city hall

Statue of Neptune (there is a statute of a Greek deity at each corner of city hall)

outdoor cafe

Outside city hall. The lion is the symbol of L'viv.

houses around the perimeter of Ploshcha Rynok

The square was full of people out for a stroll, and there were dozens of bridal parties, in all their finery, having their photos taken. We later realized that the date was 10/10/10, so it was a popular day for weddings.

We wandered around for a few hours on these old cobblestone streets, past an avante-garde art installation in a building at the end of an alleyway, multiple beautiful churches, a small outdoor book flea market (I thought about trying to haggle over something to practice my Ukrainian skills, but the only thing that really struck my fancy was a multi-volume set of Shakespeare translated into Ukrainian, but I didn't feel like carrying 7 hard bound volumes back with me). So we headed across Svobody and found a nice cafe for some really excellent espresso (good coffee being almost a religion in this town - L'viv was once part of the Austro-Hungarian empire after all, and the Viennese love their coffee).

Dominican Church

Opera House

centaur!

What? Giraffes are cool.

Shevchenko

Sign denoting that the building is an architectural monument.

More lions (I think this was a souvenir shop)

fire station

After our walk, we went back to the hotel to rest up a bit and then left for dinner. The desk clerk recommended a Ukrainian-themed restaurant called Sim Porosyat/Seven Piggies, which I'd read about in my travel guide. It was a bit of walk, but we found it easily. We were seated at a table with wooden benches covered by fur blankets and embroidered tablecloths. The waitstaff wore traditional costumes. I kept making the mistake of trying to speak Ukrainian and having people respond to me as if I could understand. I mean, can't they tell by my stilted grammar, terrible pronunciation, and accent that I'm a total hack? Anyway, I had to go and request an English menu, but the meal was delicious. I had my first of many bowls of borshch (no "t" at the end of word...), which is served with garlic rolls and is awesome. Then, back to the hotel to do my journal entry and get some sleep. I called Roberta, but my time calculation must have been off because she didn't answer.