fifth day April 9, 2010

I slept only intermittently on the overnight; the bedrolls are thin and the train noisy of course. The toilets are, as Lyuda says, "stone age", but I've seen worse. I wish I'd rolled up my pant legs a bit before going in, though, as the floor was very wet. The countryside is steppe, flat farmlands with poplar and birch trees breaking up the landscape. We talked about schools, education reforms, employment, and garbage problems in her town. The this morning at 10 AM we left the train and were met by a shuttle driver on the platform. He took us directly to the hotel Ryker, which means "train". This hotel is beautiful and new, set back from the street so it is also private and quiet. The restaurant is classy, but on the whole, expensive. After a bite eat, we met with hour English speaking tour guide for a 3 hour tour of Lviv. Igor was very well spoken and knowledgeable about the city; when I asked about his English, he said he had not lived abroad, but was a "brilliant student" of English. Though he was a mathematician, he earned most of his income by being a guide. He told us there were 68 churches in Lviv, and I think he may have shown us most of them!! They are beautiful,Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, or a combination. We saw the inside of several and then up the City Hall tower where we had a view of the entire city. He also took us through the Jewish quarter and the Armenian quarter. At the end of our tour, he took us into a shop where I bought a lovely doll (matonka) for around $30 (250 Hr). I wondered if it was too much but paid it anyway. Later we went to the outdoor market with many goods for tourists: post cards, magnets, painted eggs, traditional Ukrainian blouses and embroidered linens. There I bought several things: a blouse (vyshyvanka), belt, and headband(chichka); a tablecloth; several wooden eggs (pysanka); ukrainian military pins and hats for the "boys"; a doll for my sister; some amber jewelry I'm going to pull apart and distribute amongst my beading friends; post cards; playing cards with scenes of Lviv; spikey wooden clubs for Dmitri and Angus (bulava). After an hour at the market, we went to the main square in front of the beautiful opera house. After another bite in an uninspiring cafe, we walked back to the hotel, stopping along the way for coffee (instant) and a beer. It was an odd little place, not uncommonly tiny-- about the size of Rick's study at home. Having finished the coffee, we returned to the hotel, dropped our things and then ventured further down the street to the nearby Catholic church and the Stepan Bandera monument at sunset. We finally returned to the hotel, exhausted, for long hot showers in the wonderful bathroom. The trip was expensive but worth it. Lyudmila did an amazing job planning everything!