L'viv- Part 1

L’viv. Where do I start?! We loved the city so much that it’s going to be hard to tell you every amazing detail about it. I’ll try to not drag it on forever..

I suppose we can start with the train ride. Remember: sleeper trains! They weren’t as bad as I thought they might be. I ended up taking an anti-motion sickness medicine beforehand and I wasn’t affected at all- even though I was backwards and sideways. I even ate and drank on the train. This is a huge feat, guys. I almost never did that on trains in Switzerland.  I’m very proud of myself. Haha.

Also, I lied to all of you. The ride was only 8 hours, not 12. But it felt like forever.. Just kidding, it actually went by pretty fast. This is probably because I slept for most of it. Audrey and I were in a compartment with two of our other friends, Auvi and Natalie. We had a blast together.

The compartments each have four beds. The top two fold off the wall so you also get a nice sitting area. And the two beds on the bottom fold up and have big storage areas for all of your bags. I wasn’t about to fling myself 8 feet off the ground to sleep on a moving bed, so Audrey and Natalie had the pleasure of doing that. It looked really awkward.

Mindy, Audrey, and Nat

Natalie enjoying her compartment.

Audrey, from my view. Oh, and Mindy..

Auvi and Mindy

I didn't take a good enough picture of the train, so I googled it. This is the inside.

The beds. The "mattress" and the pillow are there, and then they come by and drop off a small package of sheets, a very thin sheet that is supposed to be a blanket, and a pillow case.

And 8 hours later, after a few naps and awkward positioning, we arrived in L’viv. If you recall one of my last posts, we are on the very edge of spring. Apparently L’viv didn’t get that memo.

We arrived at 4am on Sunday morning to 2-3 inches of snow and more falling. We made our way out of the station and found a few taxis. I say a few because there were 17 of us.. After squeezing four people (and their stuff) into taxis, we were left with an odd number. FIVE.  How do you fit five people into one itty bitty car? On top of each other, of course.

This is the video I took on the way to the hostel :)

We eventually made it to our hostel after getting lost once and swerving in the snow a few times. Ukrainian drivers aren’t afraid of snow on the roads, that’s for sure.

Once making it there, we were met by the drunk employee. Sorry, no pictures, she honestly looked possessed by something. No straight lines for this one. Too bad we missed Saturday night. We all sat in the lobby planning on waiting there until it was check in time, but the desk person was kind enough to give us free beds for the rest of the night/morning. It’s apparent that even she didn’t know exactly where she was sending us to sleep, because first we went down the stairs to find the kitchen (and the remains of salt and lemons, Fiesta!), then we went up to room 5, which was locked. Back down to the desk. Up to room 8, which was locked. Back up to room 9, which was locked.. Can you imagine a line of 17 girls carrying all of their stuff up and down these stairs trying to be quiet at 5am? At last we made it to room 11, which we eventually had a key for and we hunkered down on 12 bunk beds. Audrey and I were nice and toasty together.  P.s. this hostel has 89 steep, narrow steps from top to bottom.

We were all awake by 9ish and we had the chance to look at the room in daylight. It was the attic. With 14 beds, a shower room, and a toilet room.

We had a cute half little window on one wall, and a cute half little view to accompany it.

We also had free breakfast downstairs (in groups of three as to not overwhelm them with American awesomeness), which turned out to be the same every day. Bread, eggs, butter, and caviar. Hold the caviar, please. By Monday, we had enough sense to make Audrey tell them to stop giving it to us. They were genuinely surprised that we didn’t want any. Um, ew.

After that, we started breaking off into groups. A few girls went to church, a few girls hung out in the room trying to get more sleep, and, since the weather was turning AMAZING, Natalie, Audrey and I went out to explore the area a little bit. We don’t know exactly what we saw, but here are some pictures :)

This town is so cute! Cobblestone roads everywhere and little courtyards through tunnels. We love it!

We made it back to our hostel and back up to our room to find that our girls were right where we left them. Literally. We sat around in a circle and played some fun verbal games with each other and just enjoyed everyone’s company. After a while, we found out where we would actually be staying. Turns out that we had booked the beds in the room that we were in, and we had another room with three more beds. Natalie, Audrey and I took the three beds in the other room and then decided to head outside again.

Right when we stepped outside, Natalie spotted something out of the ordinary. There was a man standing on the sidewalk and kind of leaning on the railing separating the road and the sidewalk. So unusual, right? No, the unusual part was that he was holding up a newspaper with eye holes cut out of it so he could see through it. Ooh, creepy. We kind of just stared for a while.. Seriously, what else were we going to do? After a bit, we started walking down the sidewalk and started noticing more and more of these random people with newspapers with eye holes. They were standing against buildings, sitting on benches and leaning up against trees. It was funny and none of the locals saw any of this happening. Go foreigners.

You cant really tell, but most of those people are holding newspapers..

And you can sort of see the eye holes. Creepy? Yes.

We ended up in a café somewhere. We had coffee and a lovely chat. P.s.They were out of hot chocolate. Who runs out of hot chocolate?

But we were still able to find some pretty delicious drinks.

We made it back to the hostel in time to meet up with the other girls and head out for dinner. We had a specific restaurant in mind that was about five minutes away from our hostel. And 35 minutes later, we found it. It wasn’t exactly what some of the girls wanted, so a few of us stayed while the other girls took off to find what they were looking for. Natalie, Mindy, Audrey and I stayed and had amazing pizza- some of the best I’ve ever had- and some chocolate banana crepes for dessert. Um, yum.