Lviv is beautiful. The Germans failed to bomb it in WW2, so it's full of gorgeous old buildings. Before WWI Austria-Hungary owned it and had it as a local administrative capital, so they built lots of beautiful places. The Opera House is particularly famous:
That's Glory on top, Drama & Comedy to the left and Music to the Right.
The main square is just one big show-stopper of 18th/19th century buildings:
They've so many they can use this building for their polytechnic:
It's alright, they've still got a flasher building for the university:
And even this for their Scientists to hang out (the balcony at the House of Scientists is even better, but hidden behind trees to ruin photos):
Not a lot of people seemed to speak English, and Ben failed the drink challenge as we couldn't find a place with horlika, but we generally loved the place. We did stay in a dodgy ex-Communist hotel to add to the authenticity. All the other hotels seemed dead flash actually. But we stayed in the only ugly grey tower block in the centre of town. We climbed the local hill that the town was first founded on around 1200, and could see an ugly suburb in the background, but our hotel with its dodgy floor-ladies and security guards and pass-cards was the only ugly thing where we were.
When we went back to the main square on the 28th the Nazis, having failed to do too much damage in WW2, were back:
Not quite sure what movie it was but it was all a bit exciting.
A lot more exciting than the next day. After our fine we were very careful with our driving in the Ukraine (no point in provoking the dodgy police - so no more than 90km/h), but got to the Slovakian border in reasonable time. But then we waited 5 hours to get across. For the first couple of hours or so there was much cursing of the Ukrainian's border control people, but they were lovely when we got to them and we then discovered it was actually the Slovakians who were the hold up. They were searching every car for smuggled goods. As ever, when official people look at our boot they soon give up. There's something about strewn backpacking clothes that just doesn't excite them.
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