The (Western) Ukraine Part 2

Lviv city centre is a genuinely interesting place, and here, in the middle of the picture, two of the street theatre performers can be seen looking very grand and walking amongst the rest of the people.  They are heading for a small stage where some kind of orchestra or brass band were playing for the day.

Lviv really is a city of churches, and some Poles had told me that if I like looking in old, well-adorned churches, I should really go to Lviv.  As far as I know, the population of the Ukraine is kind of fifty-fifty split between Catholics and Eastern Orthodox (of course, there are religious minorities, and some Catholics or Orthodox may reject or simply not care about the religion they were brought up on).  Thus, besides having many beautiful (mainly eastern rite) Catholic churches, there were also beautiful Orthodox churches, such as the one below.

I absolutely love the iconostasis found in Orthodox and Uniat (eastern rite Catholic) churches.  It was difficult to get a picture of the iconostasis in this church, as several 'Babcia' ('Grandmothers') were hiding round corners, then telling people off for taking pictures.

The two shots above (I would guess) are of the City Hall in Lviv, and this building stands right in the middle of a beautiful square.  One thing I haven't mentioned is that Lviv has a brewery which makes wonderful ruby-red beer, which you can see on the table below (how I love ruby red beer!).

Being without my wife, I was forced to mix with the Polish people on the coach a lot, which wasn't a bad thing.  Here, I was sharing a drink of the ruby red beer with one of the Polish guys on the tour (a real good bloke), and we got chatting with this Ukrainian woman at the hotel bar/dining-room.

Besides Lviv, the coach tour visited some stately homes, such as the ones below.

Some of the places we visited were, in fact, old Polish churches and stately homes which were just standing in states of disrepair while the Ukrainian government were said to be doing very little to maintain them, like the ones below.

The final picture below is a 2nd World War memorial.

For me, this is very Soviet-looking like many in Eastern Europe