Arriving to Lviv

I arrived to Lviv in the evening by express train which took about 6 hours. Traveling by train between cities is quite common here and the fastest way to get around. A few of my friends are staying in Lviv for a while so I was excited to spend some time with them. Somehow we all end up in the same place, traveling together. David, Kristina, her brothers Vlad & Kent, and Slava, a friend from the US were all visiting Lviv for a few days. We had a total of 6 of us, the more the merrier. Traveling with friends is such a different vibe than traveling with family or solo. I absolutely love traveling with friends because we mostly all have the same interests and can relate to the experience in similar ways.

Kristina made things a lot easier for me by picking me up from the train station. I fell in love with the city as soon as I walked out of the train station. The city is pretty small so people mostly walk or take the tram. It's cute and intimate, lively and energetic, and very beautiful all around. It has a European feel to it with the colored buildings and cobble stone roads, which are not suitable for carting a suitcase. A lot of streets are made strictly for walking - many blocked roads keeping cars from driving. Streets are full of cafes, restaurants, bars and shops making the city a bit touristy.

I arrived late and hungry, so Kristina joined me for some company while I got food near our apartment. The streets were crawling with people everywhere. There's a few colleges in the area so it keeps the city young. Later, we all headed to a restaurant for some drinks and midnight snacks. Everything is open so late, we were able to order food past 12am. Most restaurants stay open until 4 am and some bars don't close until 6 am. No matter what day or time, places are always busy. The next day we had to relocate to a different apartment, that's a bit bigger. Half the day was spent carting luggages and settling in. I was mostly excited for the end of the day, because we went to a luxury sauna for 3 hours. Friends, sauna, dry fish and ciders, you can't get any better than that.

The next morning, I felt so relaxed after the sauna and didn't notice that I slept in way too late. We had a late start to our morning and didn't get to Cukor until 1pm for breakfast. Sometimes, those kind of days are needed. Unfortunately, the wait for our food was way too long, so we really didn't eat until 2 pm. I've noticed that when you order food in most cafes/restaurants, you never get your food brought out at the same time. Someone always gets their food before

everyone else. By the time they finish, someone else or everyone else gets their food. So you almost never eat in company but rather have everyone stare at your while you eat. It's a bit strange and something I'm still not use to. Majority of the time spent with friends consisted of a lot of going out to eat and walking around aimlessly.

Vlad and Kent headed home Saturday morning, so once again we had to relocate to a smaller apartment. I had a relaxed day on Saturday and not leaving our place until the evening. We got some dinner at a burger restaurant and later headed to try some hot wine. We were mostly trying to kill time waiting to go to Mazox for some drinks and spanking. The restaurant was the quite the experience. The waitresses walk around with a whip and can randomly pick you out for some whipping. Me and Kristina were one of the "lucky" ones who got spanked but then influenced the our waitress to whip the boys as well to get a feel. I was wearing leather pants so it actually hurt a lot. Some people got whipped with their shirts off! I don't want to imagine how painful that must feel. Luckily, we left with no bruises. We ended the night with singing some late night karaoke and enjoying each others company before heading home at 2:30 am, again. The following day we woke up to a snowy day, making the city so beautiful with white fluff. It got drastically cold so we only went out to get some groceries, spending most of the day indoors.

So far I'm really loving Lviv, and happy to be spending an extended period of time here.