The ride from Krakow to Lvov was quite straightforward. The first 80km or so after Krakow were on a good road. But then all of a sudden we were redirected to a smaller town where the one lane E40 started. The overtaking work started. The power of the GSA was very useable here. All went well, and we only saw a few other bikes on the way.

For the border crossing we choose for Krakovets. This place is not along E40 but is it the shortest way direction Lvov. It took us about 15 minutes I would say to cross the border here. First we saw a very long line of trucks, I would say about 5km before the border. You don’t need to get in line here. We drove to the beginning of that line where we saw a Polish soldier who gave us a piece of paper and pointed direction for us and . Then we saw a line of about 100m of cars, which we could pass also. So we ended up right away at a border check. First our passports were checked and then the bike’s papers. I must say everything went very smooth!

Once we have crossed the border we stopped at a gas station to buy some sok and check the gas prices. These were a lot lower than in Europe, about 11 griven for 1 liter of 95 octane of gasoline. In Belgium the same costs about 1.65 EUR. Yihaa 🙂

Now there was only about 90km to cover towards Lvov. We have booked a hostel over there near the center, the old ukrainian home. When we got into town I had to stop and change the ESA setting to high mountains. The reason was there are so many potholes in the road here. I felt the weight on the back better now, because the front fork gets a lot higher in this setting. Yes we are too heavy, I know, the bike will need a diet in Donetsk.

We only had a short stay in Lvov, but we have managed to visit a few places. The first stop was the Ivan Franko park and the university named after him; Ivan Franko was a famous western Ukrainian poet, writer and much more. Funny enough the university which he was expelled from was renamed after him, after his dead.

As we got hungry and thirsty it was time to try the local food and beer. A good place to do this is in the Puzata Chata. There is a very large choice of the local cuisine at a very decent price. The beer was good.

After this stop we went into the old town to visit some more places like the Armenian church and the rynek. We have heard there is some kind of secret cafe which you cannot see from the street. A soldier is waiting behind the door and you need to tell him the parol to get it. Slava Ukraina, I don’t say more here! You have to wait a bit to get in, but once in, it was very rewarding. The food was very nice, and there were local musicians singings ukrainian songs which you had to sing along 😉