Located almost at the western border of Ukraine, Lviv architecture has a slight resemblance to Warsaw, Poland or Prague, Czech Republic – buildings and monuments in baroque / renaissance styles & gothic elements in churches. We (mainly me) were actually panicking on our Kyiv-Peremyshl train frantically attempting to figure out where exactly Peremyshl is (spoiler alert – Poland). Chances of napping through a 5-minute Lviv train stop and having morning coffee in Poland less than an hour later were fairly high.

The city has a cozy feel with cobblestone streets, outdoor restaurants, terraces and balconies, street food and drinks, intricate unique details in urban elements – benches, street lamps, curbs – even garbage cans are unique to the city with lion engravings. Scroll down to the photo taken from our hotel balcony: you can know zero facts about Lviv, but still feel the presence of rich history: in every multi-paneled window, brick chimney, statue – 760+ years.

Lviv residents are very patriotic, passionate, speaking beautiful nearly-perfect Ukrainian – which was new to me – a Ukrainian girl growing up speaking in “surzhik” (what we call a dialect of Ukrainian where russian words or accents occasionally creep in). My delusions in thinking I could pull off speaking perfect Ukrainian effectively crashed and burned in Lviv – once I ordered a bottle of alcohol instead of a glass, so that was great.