We spent 4 months in Lviv. It’s a city we absolutely LOVE. This video gives you an idea of what Lviv looks and feels like.
Make sure to also see our video on Kyiv:
I’ve always said that Lviv has our vote as the most underrated city in Europe. It’s not just the pretty city but the extraordinary people there.
There’s more:
The Vibe. From the moment we arrived we felt a whole different vibe in the air. This is a happy, relaxed, vibrant little city. The streets of the old town are bustling, there are tons of cafés, there’s a mix of both foreign tourists and locals walking around. It feels cosmopolitan, it feels tolerant.
The buildings. At one point I told Lissette “this is like a mini-Prague”. Colourful buildings, most with decorative sculptures in their façades, with balconies laced by intricate iron railing and held up by crumbling supports. The streets are stone paved – black, uneven stones that kill the feet and wreck the suspensions of cars. But they add tons to the charm factor.
Quirky and original. A café with a car on the roof, a bar where you need a password to enter, another café that has an underground mine that you can explore while wearing a miner’s helmet (and have a coffee made by blowtorch). A restaurant that looks like it came straight out of medieval times and where they’ll put you in a cage and drop you in the cellar. There are plenty of wine bars, places that make craft beer, lots of hookah bars (which we’ve never tried). On the streets there are Russian made Ladas, old cars we’ve never heard of, interesting statues and monuments. Lviv is not big – but there are lots of quirky places/things/ and monuments that make the place really interesting and unique.
Lviv is a hilly city with a lot of parks. It’s a green city and you’re never far from nature or from views over the city. The geography adds to the relaxed vibe of the city.
It’s a cosmopolitan city. Close to our apartment we had a store selling Bio products (tofu and soy milk are things we buy a lot and which can be hard to find when travelling). There are numerous yoga studios, we’ve also spent the last month going to the best gym that we’ve encountered during our travels (Eurosport). Near our apartment we had an upmarket store selling wine from all over the world at Ukrainian prices: imagine, a quality French wine for less than $8 USD. There’s a fruit/vegetable market where I pick up everything we need. You can find vegan restaurants, Sushi restaurants, Georgian restaurants, anything from simple to fancy. The only thing Lviv misses is a good Indian restaurant (which is usually a requirement for us loving a place). In short – Lviv fits our lifestyle perfectly and it just made for a great base for a month (please read our Slow Travel post if you can’t figure out why the heck we would spend a month in a place like Lviv).
Coffee. I’ve heard places being touted for their “coffee culture”. Sorry, anywhere else pales compared to Lviv. We’ve never seen as many coffee shops anywhere as there are in Lviv. And the coffee is great. In Lviv we became coffee addicts, often drinking it late afternoon. I’ll be writing a post on the best cafés in Lviv in the next little while.
Size matters. Some people enjoy big cities. Lissette and I enjoy small to medium sized cities. You can walk anywhere in Lviv, nothing is really too far. You can walk from one side of the old town to the other in about 15 minutes. We really like that – being able to step out of the apartment and walk anywhere we want to go. It’s a very manageable city.
MUCH MORE ON LVIV on our guide:
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