Swimming in butter in L'viv

After days of driving from town to town, and moving from hotel room to hotel room, it has been a real joy to stay put for a few days, unpack our bags, walk instead of drive, and enjoy big city life. Visiting L'viv has been a wonderful ending for our trip to Ukraine.

After all the fancy welcome signs across Ukraine, L'viv, this is the best you can do?

The city of the Lion has been known variously as Lwow (Poland), Lemberg (Germany), and L'viv (Ukraine), over the years, depending upon the regime or government that controlled it.

The Lion of L'viv after too much pyvo (beer)

Formerly the capital of Galicia, L'viv is now one of the largest and most important cities in Ukraine. Despite Soviet and Nazi occupation during World War II, the "Stare Misto" (or Old City) has retained its beautiful historic buildings and extensive cobblestone streets.

Be forewarned, flat shoes a must to handle the cobblestone
sidewalks and streets....

...although some local women flaunt practicality.

While Poles and Jews made up the majority of the city's population until World War Two, the Holocaust rid the city of most of its Jews, and following the war most Poles were transferred out of L'viv by the Soviets. L'viv is now very much a Ukrainian city.

Terrific weekend second-hand book market but Ukrainian or Russian language skills required

Although firmly in Ukraine, L'viv looks and feels more like Prague or other similar central European cities. Even better than Prague, however, is the very reasonable cost of visiting the city. Prices in L'viv for hotels, restaurants, and museums are significantly lower than most other cities we have visited, making it an amazing holiday destination. You do need to speak Ukrainian or Russian, however, or be with someone who does, because speaking only English will just not cut it except in the main hotels.  However many restaurants do have English menus.

Speaking of restaurants, Lev took us to an interesting restaurant located under the Opera and named “Livy Bereh.”  The name means “Left Bank” because the restaurant is located on the left bank of the Poltava River which flows underneath the Opera. It’s an easy going place where patrons, if they wish, can don various coat, masks, or dresses from various operas. Also all the walls and doors are all a bit wonky.  Another enjoyable cafe is the Kabinet Cafe just across the street from a stretch of the medieval wall that used to surround L’viv.

Beware: You are entering Livy Berah

Perhaps it's because it's the end of a very busy trip, but we have not followed our usual mode of traveling since we arrived in L'viv.  Rather than run around looking at sites, visiting museums, and starting the day early, instead we readily accepted the café lifestyle of L'viv. Our days have been spent enjoying the really great food in the city's many cafés and restaurants. Serving staff take their time, the kitchen prepares most food from scratch, and meals are leisurely and delicious.  It has been easy to give in to the temptations.

It was wonderful to see a Caprese salad on the menu after so few vegetables in the 'provinces', but who expected mayonnaise, and so much of it?

Or, for that matter, so much butter on the potato varenikes? But oh, were they fabulous.

Despite too much time sitting around eating and drinking, we have still managed to do a bit of sightseeing. A favourite were the many beautiful squares scattered throughout the old city.  Our home base, the Grand Hotel, is located on Prospekt Svobody, which also contains the L'viv Theatre of Opera and Ballet, and a huge monument to Taras Shevchenko (Ukraine's National Poet).

The grand Opera and Theatre of L'viv, beneath which lies the cafe Livy Berah

Politics anyone? You can find it daily at Prospekt Svobody.

Prospekt Svobody is also a place where musicians meet to play together, political parties put up information booths, and people gather to play chess, talk, and check each other out.

Some locals playing chess, or is it checkers, on a bench on the main drag

The city centre around the City Hall (Ploshcha Rynok) is a pedestrian zone that is always full of people shopping, sightseeing, and eating. But it is also not surprising to find a group of people gathered together singing or soldiers touring.This group had just visited a bank machine, making for long lines for everyone else.

We're not sure about the soldiers but they look like they're having fun.

Some of the oldest and most interesting historical buildings in L'viv can be found at Ploshcha Rynok. It is the heart of the L'viv UNESCO World Heritage Site that was established in 2008.

Like the rest of Ukraine, you can't escape pork even in Ploshcha Rynok.

Ploshcha Rynok, an old market square, is filled with three and four story buildings, some of which date back to the late 1600s. In the Ploshcha one can find, among other things, a collection of small museums that make up the L'viv History Museum.  The collections are well done and interesting but descriptions are almost entirely in Ukrainian, so be sure to brush up on your history before you go! It also took us quite a while to figure out which historical period was covered by which museum building, as published information was quite confusing.

This beautiful building houses a branch of the L'viv City History Museum 

This too is a branch of the history museum, which Lev (check out the dude in the orange t-shirt) is about to visit

L'viv is rich with beautiful statues, churches, plaques, museums, and other historical buildings. Here are a few of the ones we visited:

The medieval wall of L'viv is still standing; unlike us after some particularly filling dinners

It's easy to get around to the sites in L'viv as the downtown core is awash with streetcars and buses of all sizes and descriptions

More street and cafe culture in L'viv: Apparently a great place to meet girls

If your home is on fire in L'viv, the fire truck might come from this gorgeous fire station

We couldn't do the historical and cultural sites justice in the few days we had here and, our commitment to the city's cafe culture sapped our time and energy. No matter, we enjoyed our visit to L'viv.

Lev's move to the university for a five-week Ukrainian language programme late Sunday afternoon, and our own return to Toronto tomorrow morning, has also changed the ambiance of the trip. Lev is enjoying the programme so far, which is terrific, but his absence means that this blog post won't benefit from his stellar work on the photographs and captions. We apologize in advance for our failings.


We hope that you have enjoyed our blog and experienced a bit of the excitement we have felt in our trip to Ukraine. There will be at least one more blog post after we return to Canada, that will provide some travel advice should you wish to make the trip yourselves.

Your blogging travelers (guess who is who):