Travel Feed #10: Lviv

In May 2018, my good pal Hive account@danielw and I have spent 6 days in the saddle, traveling the total of 601 km while exploring southeastern Poland and western Ukraine. The location, briefly described below, is only one of the amazing destinations we have managed to visit during our tour.

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Lviv

Lviv is a multi-ethnic city situated in western Ukraine, approximately 70 km from the border with Poland. It is the largest city in the area and also one of the most famous Ukrainian cultural centers. During the Poland -> Ukraine tour Lviv was our target destination. After two days spent on exploring the city, we were already heading back to Przemyśl.

Lviv's culture was shaped over the years by Polish, Austro-Hungarian, Italian and German influencers. The historic universities, tenements and churches date back to the 14th century. In the matter of fact, Lviv is the home for the oldest university foundation in Ukraine, the Ivan Franko National University of Lviv.

The oldest university foundation in Ukraine - the Ivan Franko National University of Lviv

The largest scientific university in Ukraine - Lviv Polytechnic National University

St. George's Cathedral

The High Castle Parks provides astounding panoramic views on the city. If you decide to take your bike and you're carrying a heavy load, you might encounter problems that will slow you down while getting up to the top :) The last 50 meters are pretty sheer and there isn't any direct connection between the walkways, so you end up lifting your bike 1 meter up to get from one to the next one.

But the view is worth the efforts...

Accommodation

To fully experience the everyday life in Lviv, we've decided to sleep close to the heart of the city. While waiting at a gas station for the heavy rain to stop, about 10 km from Lviv, we've managed to find a place to spend the first night which was only 5 minutes from the city center. This was all thanks to Couchsurfing :)

We spent the second night at Hostel 83. The building pretty much looked like a typical 80s - 90s hall of residence that wasn't renovated at all. I do not recommend taking a shower there without flip-flops :) For a night in a room with two single beds we paid only about $7. Also it turned out that our room overlooked the St. George's Cathedral...

... at least a part of it :)

The overall experience wasn't that bad (good enough for a night or two), but you won't find this place through Booking.com or Hostelworld :)

Food & Drinks

We had breakfast, dinner and beers all at Cafe Cisar that was located relatively close to where we stayed. The food was good, the staff nice and friendly and the prices... extremely low :) For a mixed-meat pan I paid about $2, while pizza costed me nearly $3. The price for a glass of draft beer was $0.75.

Since we usually had our meals outside, there's one thing I should complain about... those were the clusters of kids who would get out from a bus, ask everyone at the tables for money and then catch another bus to stop at another restaurant/bar/cafe. The cycle would repeat itself for a couple times a day. We really needed to pay attention to our stuff :)