We left the conference after goodbyes and breakfast at 9 am Saturday morning, trusting the GPS to take us to Lviv and then on toward Nikoloipolia. We stopped to fill up on gas at this Luk Oil while were were still on the small road (turns out there were much better roads and it was only two hours from the correct Polyanna to Lviv) Garry wanted coffee and more little chocolate croissants in a bag and I asked him to get me pretzels. They didn't have any so he bought a can of Pringles, I asked if they had any flavors other than the bacon he had bought, so he went back in to see if he could trade it for paprika. The guy told him in Russian "Of course your wife did not like them, I cannot change them, they will be upset in Kiev" so Garry had to buy two cans.
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| There were ladies out raking hay by hand in the field |
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On to L'viv!
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It was a good day to drive, Garry even used his sunglasses I bought him at Dollarama before we left Manitoba. We were approaching the city by 11 am, the GPS took us right to the city center, where we parked and walked around for a couple hours, enjoying the European style buildings and Catholic cathedrals. This area of Ukraine used to be part of Poland.
There were some buskers, on the side street, including these three lovely ladies who played these instruments that were both strummed like a guitar and made plucked notes also, lots of strings in two directions! they sang beautifully, we listened to three songs before moving on.
We enjoyed a rare treat for lunch, spicy stir fry and cans of Canada Dry and Dr Pepper (both very rare also.)
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| We found spicy noodles for lunch |
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| there was a book market around this statue |
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| Shevchenko statue downtown |
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Everyone was taking photos of the guy being interviewed
we think he was from the Slaboda (far right) party |
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| This little girl had her hat blown off by air from the pigeons flying up |
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| we drove past the opera house on our way out of the city |
Around one pm we set the GPS for Nikoliploia and were off, we planned to stop for the night, since it said it would be 14 hours of driving. Then as we were traveling the 2 lane highway Garry saw what looked like a castle on a hilltop, and drove off to find it.
Olesko Castle
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| Look what's that? |
The other large building appeared to have been a church, we were amazed as we drove up, there were no signs to get off the highway, but it was easy to find when we did, and there were several kiosks selling refrigerator magnets, wooden swords, shields and crossbows for kids and other Ukrainian tourist items, we got an Olesko magnet. We walked over to the churchyard first and then found the KASA to buy tickets for the castle, they cost about two dollars. This was the birthplace of a Polish king, and part of the L'viv art museum. We bought two booklets in English at the gift shop.
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| selling stuff by the church building |
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| This saint must have had a special day |
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| dragons on the church |
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| walking up to the big house |
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| these guys are big |
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| the king that was born here |
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| told you they were big (Garry is 6'5") |
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| It was renovated in the 1970s |
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| A really large painting of a battle the King won |
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| Me (Teresa) inside the castle courtyard door |
Armed with our guidebooks we saw and found another castle to tour from the highway, this one was a little harder to drive to from the road. From the pictures in the books, we decided it was Pidhirtsi built by the same family as the first one we stopped at. This one was cheaper to get into, half the price, but the inside is not renovated, they are working on it. As you can see from the outside it was a grand house. Unfortunately we lost one of our booklets here, which was sad, even though it only cost $ 1.50 we hadn't read it yet. Garry walked back to get it after we got to the car, but they had already locked the gate at 4:30 pm.
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