[ Sept.2018 ] On the last day of our stay in Lviv in the western Ukraine, we went to the restaurant called ‘Green Snake’ for lunch.
The four of us each had a good dish, such as calf lever, tongue and pork knuckle, but the most interesting thing was drinking four different liqueurs called Nastroyanka.
All of them were green, maybe something to do with the name of the restaurant, and they were made from lime, cactus (I had never imagined that), thyme and absinthe and the percentage of the alcohol became stronger in that order.
The strongest, absinthe, had 65% alcohol, which was too much for me and I could not drink it.
The best for me was the lime.
After lunch, we went to the Outdoor Arts & Crafts Market, which opens every day in the old town.
The main feature of this market is the hand embroidered blouses.
The design was very similar to the traditional Romanian blouse, but Romanian ones were mainly cotton, but these ones here were linen.
They all were very pretty and I could not choose one, so we left it there and moved on to another part of the market, which was selling accessories, goods with Putin’s face on, and so on.
I found one necklace made up with chips of amber and other stones very nicely, so I bought it.
It was not so expensive, but because it was an open air market, we had to pay in cash, which meant that we needed to get more Huryvnia, the Ukrainian currency, from an ATM, even though this was the last day.
As for the blouse, later in the evening, we came back here when people were already closing up the stalls and bought one with a sash from one middle aged woman.
Our
friend, Alina, was not with us at that time, so we communicated with gestures and found that the most traditional ones are embroidered on white cloth with red and black thread.
I could have spent more time in this market, but Alina and I had to move on to a dance lesson next.
I had a classic ballet lesson in Kiev, but here, we had a lesson for contemporary dance.
Alina, who is a dance teacher herself, had some connections so we could join a class.
The studio was situated on the outskirts of the town in the industrial area and there were about 10 students.
A pretty young woman called Maria was our teacher.
It was a free style dance with two people together pushing and pulling each other.
I had never done this kind of dance and it was very interesting.
While we were dancing, my husband ventured to go and have his hair cut.
He often has his hair cut during holidays.
Fortunately, the salon owner where he had his hair cut had lived in the US in the past, so they could communicate in English and, apparently, they enjoyed chatting.
She said ” To get treatment for my son’s illness, we went to Crimea in July. Because of the Russian invasion, I was apprehensive, but in fact it was easy and nothing different. 
There were many Ukrainians there”.
Apparently, she even said “Don’t believe everything you read in the news”.
That is intriguing and I wonder what is really going on there.
My husband also went to a museum of icons, but he was the only visitor there and he felt all the workers were watching him and did not feel comfortable.
Now the holiday is getting towards its end.
For
the last dinner, we went to a jazz bar called ‘Library’.
This is another place that unless you know it, you cannot go there, because there were no signs and it is situated inside an ordinary apartment building.
It seemed very popular and so many people were there.
Luckily, Alina had booked a table, so we could sit down and had a light dinner, such as a cheese platter and a rabbit dish.
Of course, we enjoyed the music.
The bassist of this band happened to be Alina’s friend, Marc, so we had a bit of a chat, too.
The drummer was a young man who played as if he was bored, maybe he was pretending to be cool, but the singer was very nice, singing very happily.
After dinner, we went to the airport directly to catch the midnight flight.
This holiday was so full and enjoyable that I cannot believe it was only for 5 days.
