Lviv, Ukraine With The Kids Was So Much Fun!

We spent a wonderful eight days in Lviv, a charming city in western Ukraine. We included this city in our itinerary after a friend of ours, who is from Ukraine, recommended we visit it. It took a good deal of effort to get there, as we left the car in the Krakow airport longterm parking and took three trains over the course of an entire day, but we sure are happy she gave the recommendation and we went there!

We had an amazing time visiting the city and we felt like we could have spent a lot more days there, drinking coffee, eating great food, snacking on delicious chocolate, and having drinks on outdoor patios around the beautiful and historic city. On top of that, it’s one of the least expensive places we have ever visited anywhere (the prices were similar to prices we’ve encountered in Cambodia and off-the-beaten track Indonesia).

Guide books describe Lviv as like Prague or Krakow but without the tourists. It’s a beautiful city that wasn’t destroyed during the World Wars. The streets are all cobblestone and there are trams running all over the place. Many buildings are ornate and beautiful. The city has traded hands over the centuries from Poland to the Austrian empire to Poland to the Soviet Union and finally to Ukraine, and the architecture reflects the different influences. And it’s true that tourists are few and far between!

According to what we’ve read and what we’ve heard, Lviv is what Ukraine wants to be. It is here that the Ukranian national identity is the strongest. We aren’t qualified to say whether there is an anti-Russian sentiment, but we did see Putin’s face printed on floor mats and toilet paper, one local craft brew has Putin’s name alongside a derogatory word, and the Lviv city hall had a big banner demanding that the Kremlin free Ukranian political prisoners.

Among other things, the city is known for a very developed cafe/coffee culture, chocolate making, and beer (now that’s a trio you can’t go wrong with!). A “Lviv coffee” was described to us by a barista as “like a Turkish coffee but a lot bigger,” and there are coffee stands all over the city where you can get all sorts of different coffee preparations to go. We also visited the Lviv Chocolate Company, where you can see them make chocolate, and purchased some heavenly truffles. There is also a craft beer culture and the local lager has a history that (according to what we read online) includes being sent to the King of Poland and being shipped for parties at the Kremlin.

We visited during a really nice time of year when the markets were overflowing with fresh fruit and produce. We bought loads of fresh fruit every day. A kilo of apples cost about 40 cents; a pint of blackberries cost about 50 cents; a pile of veggies was less than a dollar; and so on. (Oh, and a half liter bottle of good beer was about 60 cents at the store.) The restaurants were also delicious. There is a strong food culture there and we had some very yummy meals.

Since people sometimes wonder or worry about safety when traveling to other places, we’ll just mention as an aside that we felt totally safe and were never concerned in the least about our safety there. People were very friendly with us and the kids, and we were asked quite a few times how we had heard about Lviv. We also don’t speak or read Ukranian, but it was never an issue as people were happy to help out and spoke at least some (or lots of) English. (The language was only an issue when we tried to figure out which item at the grocery store was butter, or little things like that!)

During our time there, we walked the parks, hung out at a nearby playground, visited the local market on a daily basis, and wandered around the city center. It’s a compact, walkable city (although we did hop on trams every day to spare the kids some walking) and it’s rewarding to just wander around. There are beautiful churches, some old medieval walls, a huge city park, a big square in the old town and fruit, coffee, and beer everywhere! And everything was sooo inexpensive!

We weren’t ready to leave after eight days!

And here are some more pictures from Lviv: