L'viv is where it's at!

So this weekend I went to L’viv with my friend Olga.  She invited me earlier in the week, and of course I accepted because I love traveling.  We took a train from Chernivtsi at 7:30 on Saturday morning and arrived in L’viv at around 1:00 pm.  I wasn’t sure how much the tickets were going cost, I thought maybe like 200 grivna each way. Um, yeah, it cost like 60 grivna each way.  That means that it cost like $15 total for travel.  What's crazier is that we traveled second class.  I can’t even imagine how cheap 3^rd class would have been.  It was a six hour train ride each way, which kind of sucked, but what are you going to do.

Let me just say that L’viv feels much more different than Chernivtsi.  Chernivtsi feels very Ukrainian, while L’viv feels more European.  The buildings are more or less the same style, just bigger, because L’viv is a bigger city.  I could try to explain the actual differences, but I’ll just show you pictures instead...  

 Gothic Cathedral, stupid car

 The Opera House

 City Hall, and the TOWER

 View from the top...

 Opera House from above

 going down

 Dominican Church

It’s even more beautiful than the pictures make it out to be.  You’ll just have to come see for yourself. 

When we arrived to the city, we walked to the center of the city, where all the important building are.  After about an hour we went to eat.  I got borsch and perogies, cause that’s how I roll.  After we were done eating we met Olga’s friend who studies in L’viv.  We went to the City hall where we climbed the tower.  It was quite a workout.  First we had to walk to the 4^th floor of the building where the entrance was to the tower.  Then we started to climb, and climb, and climb.  Once we reached the top though, the view was definitely worth the climb.

From the tower we went to a few churches, and looked around a little bazaar.  The bazaar had books, movies, antiques, pottery (and yes Mike I did look for some soviet stuff, but nothing), metalwork, old soviet military medals, etc. 

Eventually, we went to this really cool café called Gas Lamp.  The café was a four story house, and each story had one small room with a couple tables.  We had to climb up to the 4^th floor to find a table, but it was no tower.  Now I haven’t had very much wine in my life, but I can assure you that you haven’t had wine until you’ve had hot spiced wine.  It was red wine with cinnamon and some other spices in it.  It was really good and perfect for the day since it was a little chilly outside.  Oh, and a Nightwish song came on when I was in the Café…

Our train left the city at 11:30 Saturday night so we didn’t get back to Chernivtsi until 5:30 in the morning.  Oh, did I mention that they lock the Residence Halls at midnight…now I know when they open them too…