Lviv-The Most Beautiful City In Ukraine

You cannot go to Lviv and miss seeing all the wonderful architecture it has to offer. The city’s central part is really beautiful. I mean, Lviv is OLD. It was founded in 1256 by King Danilo who gave this city as a gift to his son, King Leo. We even have a monument to King Danilo in the middle of Lviv:

It took us about fifteen minutes to walk from our apartment to the main part of Lviv, called the Market Square (Ploscha Rynok). It’s a famous place, flooded with tourists during the warmer months, and you can only imagine what it looked like when Euro 2012 (Football Championship) was happening in Lviv.

The square has the main building where the parliament of the city meets, called Ratusha. The statues of Greek gods and goddesses are placed in four corners of the square. This one is Diana.

We occupied the kids by making them count how many lions they can find. We found a ton!

Here are some views of the square for you! (No, people in Ukraine don’t wear those sort of skirts on every day basis. Those were ladies selling treats walking around the square).

There is something special about that black building. I just forgot what exactly that is…

My mom told us this is the “make a wish” bench. The kids just like the lions on the side.

Beautiful lanterns through out the old part of Lviv.

We look more like tourists now…especially with Robert wearing that “Ukraine” hat.  My sister claims she can tell Robert is not Ukrainian just by looking at him.

Our young grandma still doesn’t look like she has three grandchildren.

For lunch that day, we were meeting our old friends. We went to the restaurant called “Masons”. It was quite a unique place, popular with tourists.

Although it says it is the most expensive restaurant in the area, it didn’t seem that way. Food was very good though! Apparently the bathroom was a tourist attraction on its own.

The funny part was that while Alex was in fact using that restroom, a group of tourists came up to the door of the bathroom. They wanted to see the inside, but Alex was taking his sweet time.  They finally got tired of waiting and left (for their own good, I assure you).

And another bathroom—that’s Katya and Lyena having fun.

I thought I said the restaurant had good food!!?? These facial expressions…

And here is a our happy group. This couple—Slava and Bogdan have been our family friends for a long as I remember myself. They used to live on the floor directly below us for many years. But the brightest memory of them from childhood is my mom apologizing a number of times for flooding their apartment…Because water was on only for three hours in the morning and for three hours in the evening in our apartment, sometimes it was hard to remember whether or not the faucet was in the “on” or “off” position…They were always so forgiving!

My mom took us to a roof of one restaurant in the neighborhood where we found some more beautiful views of Lviv.

Busy with cars nowadays…driving on cobble stone is not so pleasant and is very hard on cars.

I must skip to our last days of exploring now. On Friday, before we left, we went to the Museum of Weapons. Here is Robert standing in front of the remnants of the wall that used to surround the main part of Lviv. One of the buildings along that wall was made a museum. Frankly speaking, the museum seemed much more impressive when I was younger than it is now.

Just walking along the tram tracks (those trams are the ones that run on electricity).

As we walked back to Market Square, Robert snapped a picture of this truck (lorry). For some reason he thought it was simply epic to see a truck like this in a part of the city like that.

Lyena didn’t even notice the truck, she was just happy to spend time with her nephews and niece.

Next stop is a must if you visit Lviv—walk 5 minutes towards the Opera House and you find this outdoor souvenir bazaar. Rain or shine it is there. We bought quite a bit of souvenirs…but still there is so many wooden beautiful things I would love to get for our house (when we figure out how to hang things on the wall).

Finally, it’s a tradition to come to Lviv and take pictures in front of its famous Opera House. It’s considered to be the third most beautiful opera house in the world after one in Italy and in Odessa.

That was a long but fun day. The rest of the day the kids playing Phase 10 with Lyena (they would play non-stop if we’d let them) and went to dinner to another family friend. Got filled up with the yummiest pelmeni (dumplings with meat) that I’ve had in a very long time and with the most amazing apple pliatsok (layered cake) that was neither too sugary nor too heavy. Fantastic!!!!

Here is our little family taking a picture with the timer in the morning of our departure day.

We had a great trip! Glad the kids were older and we didn’t have to fly all the way from the states or Japan to see family. And now, everyone just has to come visit us!!!