Lviv-ing It Up!

Haha....sorry if that title was cheesy, but I couldn't pass up that golden opportunity! This past weekend has been of the four day variety for all the teachers here in Ukraine and it was great! The majority of the teachers went to visit part of the Carpathian Mountains, but three other teachers and myself decided to explore Lviv, often called the Paris of Eastern Europe.

We left Wednesday and rode a bus through the night. We arrived at 6:30am Thursday morning and were faced with the decision of what to do next. We couldn't check into our hotel until 2pm, but we had all of our luggage with us. We decided to walk to the hotel to see if they would let us leave our things there. Our little GPS told us the hotel would be a nine minute walk; it lied. Forty-five minutes later we finally arrived at our hotel, and luckily they let us check in right away. We set down all our things and ended up taking a two hour nap, which was probably the best decision we made all day. A night on a bus doesn't make for exactly the most restful sleep.

Rested and rejuvenated, we walked to the bus stop and boarded the bus to the center. It took around forty minutes, but it was fun looking out the window and seeing a new place. Everything was so green!

Our first order of business was to find a place to eat. We settled on a place called House of Legends. It's a well known restaurant that is basically a house. You walk up a narrow spiral staircase in the back and choose any room from the five levels. Each room is decorated differently. We sat down and ordered a delicious lunch, all while taking in our new surroundings and mapping out our activities over the next  couple days. My favorite part about the restaurant was actually the bathroom. It was in a long room, with the toilet at the end facing the door. On the back of the door was a screen where clips would play, making it seem as though people were opening a window in the door and looking at you while you went to the bathroom. It was really weird, but a funny idea.

Who doesn't want to eat in a restaurant that looks like this??

I'll tell you what this is: a fire hazard

After eating we caught a tram to the Lychakiv Cemetery. This is a very famous and historical cemetery, and it was really cool to visit. It actually costs money (although not very much) to enter the cemetery. The sun was shining and it looked beautiful shining in through the leaves of the trees in the cemetery. There were so many graves and some were incredibly ornate while others were broken down and forgotten. The grounds were huge and had an overgrown feel to them, though not in a bad way. We spent a good hour or two here, even making a feline friend along the way.

Cheesing in the cemetery

Hey Mom, I know how I want to be buried

Trying to be suave and graceful

Mad because I am not suave or graceful

Ivan Franko is buried here

Giggles in the cemetery

Meet my friend Beverly: the friendly cemetery cat

Finally we headed back into town and started on the hunt to find a pie place that our guidebook talked about. It ended up not serving pie as we know it, but had really good sweet buns. We got an assortment of blueberry, apple, cherry, and cinnamon (wow the cinnamon was amazing) and headed over to a nearby park to eat our treats. I probably got around seven or eight buns and it cost me less than $2, which only made them taste better!

Buns, buns, buns

If you don't like old people, then I don't like you

We still had time left in our day, so we went back towards the opera house and encountered a charming open market. We shopped and got some food. We sat by the fountain of the opera house for a while, just enjoying being on vacation and not having anywhere to be. Then we caught a bus back to our hotel.

The opera house at sunset

But the day's adventures didn't end there. We went down to the lobby of the hotel because that's the only place we could get WiFi, and we ended up meeting a few guys who are on the Ukrainian Triathlon team. They spoke a little English so we stayed up until 1am talking with them. I haven't really met that many Ukrainian people my age, so it was really fun to meet some new people.

The next day we did a little historical walking tour that our guide book had mapped out. We started at the monument to Taras Shevchenko which is right by the market we had seen the previous day. This worked out perfectly because we wanted to get these really yummy bread things. I got mine covered in chocolate while the other teachers opted for coconut and cinnamon.

Monuments and such

That thing was SO good, yet SO messy

Markets 'errywhere

We then headed to the nearby Arts and Crafts Market to do even more shopping! After that we swung by a couple churches and some areas where buildings were destroyed by the Nazis or Soviet Union.

John the Baptist's Church--the lucky guy

Finally we began to make our trek up High Castle. It is the highest point of Lviv, and the remains of the castle that once served as the city's main protection can be found here. It was a little bit of a hike, but there were beautiful views, and once again the trees were so so so green! I am just in love with green after the long winter!

On our way up!

Up, up, up the stairs we go! (Name that movie nerd friends)

Getta load of that view

After High Castle we decided to cut our tour short and find some food. A lot of places were busy (since this was a popular tourist weekend) but we ended up wandering into a place called Churrasco Grill and Beer. We didn't know what it was, but it ended up being a place similar to a Brazilian grill. You pay a set fee and then servers bring you different types of meat every fifteen minutes or so, along with an assortment of Ukrainian salads and vegetables. It was really good and an unexpected experience.

Food--always my favorite part of the day

Waiting for the bus that never came

We planned on going home a little early to meet up with our new Ukrainian friends, but for some reason the bus we usually took wasn't coming. After waiting for a while, we asked a nearby taxi about how much it would be to get us close to our hotel, and after hearing the price, we decided to get in! It was the best taxi ride ever! This man was crazy. He had a fly swatter shaped like a hand that he would wave out the window at passing cars. He also had little signs that said "Hello" and "Goodbye" in Russian that he would hold out the window. He didn't speak any English, but he always wanted us to watch him to see what silly thing he did next. It was a lot of fun, plus we got back to the hotel way faster.

There's crazy in his eyes

Paka! Paka! It means bye bye!

Priviet! This means "Hello!"
In hindsight, I should've reversed the order of these pictures, but what's done is done.
Deal with it

Because we were so late, we didn't end up getting to spend too much time with our friends, but we still got to talk with them for a while. Then we headed back up to our rooms to pack and get some rest for the next day.

In the hallway of our weird and very far away hotel

The next morning we got to the bus stop forty-five minutes before our bus was supposed to leave. Alysha went to ask a ticket lady where we could find the bus and the lady told her that our bus didn't leave until 10:45PM! Suddenly, we had a whole other day! We threw our bags into the luggage locker, but soon found out that it was only our bus number that had changed, and that our time of departure was still the same. The bus picked us up and we spent the majority of the day traveling. I got home safe and sound, completely content from a wonderful vacation.

Sunday was a beautiful day, made especially good because the fountain at the temple got turned on! The temple gets more and more beautiful each week!

After church a couple teachers came over to my house to hang out. We watched "Up" and played with my host family's adorable new puppy!

Ahh he's so cute! His name is Marty

It's been a great few days, but now it's time to get back to teaching! Only four more weeks left!

So these are the kinds of hooligans I teach...