The long-awaited Carpathians and warm Lviv!
While a long and interesting work is underway on a story about a journey along the shores of the Aegean Sea, we had a short trip to Lviv and the Carpathians, which I cannot but share. Despite the fact that usually our trips are quite positive and in sunlight, this unfortunately fell into the category of “almost successful”... Nevertheless, we met again with our friends and this meeting left the warmest imprint on the pages of this trip.
Lviv
At the end of the working day, we boarded the Intercity train, which would take us to Lviv in five and a half hours. And there we will live with my friend Lena and her daughter Dasha. My Dasha said that she begins to feel bad right before boarding the train. The further we drove, the worse the situation became - Dasha's temperature rose and her body ached. In this situation, one thing was soothing that we had already been vaccinated with the first dose of Moderna for almost a month. By the time we arrived by train, the idea of traveling already seemed shaky. We scoured the Internet for the nearest 24-hour pharmacies in order to buy an express test for coronavirus. Fortunately, Lena convinced them that they had recently been ill and a separate room was waiting for us. The next day, the situation with Dasha did not improve, and yet we ran to take an express test. It turned out to be negative, but the fear still didn’t dispel, what if they passed too early? Fortunately, in our time there is the Internet, and Dasha was able to diagnose herself the next morning, which the doctor later confirmed - bacterial tonsillitis. After a while, the body and medicines began to overcome the disease, and we were glad that the trip did not fail, in the evening we were even able to get out to the Fifth Dungeon themed restaurant.
Concert on the Balcony
Lviv, as always, turned out to be beautiful. Especially when you walk along it not on a day off (on a weekend the number of tourists rolls over and it is much more difficult to feel the unhurried atmosphere of the city). The next day, Dasha got stronger under the influence of antibiotics, and we took a wonderful walk to the Museum of Architecture and Life.
It is located in a huge forest park, so we enjoyed the views of mountain villages without leaving Lviv. In general, the houses turned out to be very nice, and the workers were friendly, always ready to tell interesting information about the life of our ancestors.
In the evening, the four of us visited the House of Chamber Music. They listened to the organ, the music was accompanied by visual projections on one of the walls of the building. In general, they were culturally enlightened as best they could.
Lena and her daughter Dasha, despite the fact that they live near the Carpathians, have never been in the mountains. We considered it our duty to persuade them to go with us on the route, at least for a day. The stars converged, and they gave up the night before the trip, and there were just two empty seats in our carriage on the train. So we prepare a bunch of sandwiches and hit the road in the morning!
Skole
My Dasha already feels full, only her throat still worries a little. We are all cheerful. The drive from Lviv is only an hour and a half. We popped into our hotel, dropped our things and started the route. We walked uphill to the Kamyanka waterfall.
Lena and Dasha did well, you can’t even say that this is their first climb. The road took two and a half hours, and at the end we were waiting for a picturesque waterfall and restaurants with Carpathian food and Carpathian portions.
How good it is to have the Carpathians! Here, an hour and a half from Lviv, there is literally everything - both sharp firs and huts and mountain rivers, what else is needed for Carpathian happiness? Finishing the shish kebab under the murmur of the river, we could not get enough of the fact that after a few years we are finally back in the Carpathians.
Lena's Dasha stayed in the restaurant house, and the three of us climbed a little up to the mountain lake with a lot of tadpoles.
Another distinctive feature of being in the Carpathians is the aromas of the forest, this time with mushroom notes. There were a lot of mushrooms, mostly inedible, but they looked very picturesque against the backdrop of forest beauties, so we enjoyed their view.
It’s even good that the mushrooms were inedible, otherwise all this beauty would have been taken apart. When we returned to Skole, it was already time to put Lena and Dasha on the return train. Our journey continued. Oddly enough, the search for a normal restaurant led us to a gas station, there is a restaurant A la minute with a perfectly fine banosh.
Our first day was training. Now there will be a real trip to the high mountain Parashka. While I was lying on the bed and thinking about the campaign, a red cat peeked out from behind the bed and offered to meet. The doors to the room must be closed well, otherwise a black cat came to meet Dasha in the middle of the night, it’s good that Dasha didn’t scream very loudly.
Mount Parashka
We are mentally prepared for routes of any complexity, but this one is at the limit of complexity. According to memoirs, the ascent to Hoverla was easier, although many years have passed, so the comparison is not entirely fair. The first half of the route goes through the forest with a rather critical angle. I'm still amazed at how trees grow so evenly at this angle.
For those who have mastered the forest, a reward awaits - fields of blueberries and lingonberries. Simply the best place to take a breather and boost your blood blueberry levels. The second half of the route is endlessly beautiful, there is already an open area and for the next two hours you will be walking along the ridges of the mountains, not taking your eyes off the panoramas that go beyond the horizon. On the way to the top of Parashka, you need to go through other mountains, so the road will go up and down.
And closer to the end of the route there is a spring where you can replenish the water supply. That's just for the sake of it you need to go down and climb back along a very steep descent. So you need to calculate your strength well. Dasha was our hero on this trip, as she went down for water. For some reason, my strength was rapidly leaving me, although I am very enduring on such routes.
We collected two bottles, hid one for the way back, one to take with us further. The top of the mountain at the very end seems completely impregnable. But you understand that it remains to collect all the forces and you are at the top. We did just that with a bunch of photo stops.
As soon as we climbed to the very top, instead of jubilation, I felt a strange pressure drop inside me. I haven't been this exhausted on a climb in a long time. The return route for me seemed somehow infinitely difficult. It was even more difficult than when we were going up, we also chose a slightly different path for the descent and had to do stunt tricks to get down to the city. But they went down right next to their favorite restaurant. On the way we were 8 hours and 10 minutes. This is one of our longest mountain hikes. No matter how much I tried to sit on a chair in a restaurant, it did not get any easier. Is it old age? But, fortunately, it was just a bacterial sore throat. It was only necessary to reach the hotel and drink a herbal tea with a ginger cat on my knees, as I got so hot that I imagined with horror how we would now return to Lviv. Tomorrow, according to the plan, we have an eviction, then another mountain and an evening train back to Lena. In the morning we realized that we need to look for another train and take me to Lviv while I can still walk.
In the evening, the owner of the hotel told us about the power of alternative medicine and said that now they would give me canned fly agaric and everything would be fine! I was not ready for such a turn, I politely refused the mushroom. On the first day, we noticed two jars in the kitchen, on one the inscription “Amanita”, on the second “Veselka”. Fortunately, there was a morning train with empty cars. I wrote to Lena that we continue to arrange an infirmary with them) So I continued bed rest. True, we did not have time for the train, so we had to run in this state. By evening, I felt a little better, and we were even able to go out to a restaurant together, where my Dasha was seriously poisoned by a cake... A new round of health problems began. We had one more day to spare. We were able to fully spend it, walking around Lviv. We even discovered a cool new restaurant called Underground Kindrat.
There is good live music in the evening. The establishment was found by accident, we, as in the last trip to Lviv, did not work out with the search for a restaurant on the last day, since everywhere we wanted to sit was busy. But here, apparently, fate itself led to Kindrat. Despite the severity of the trip, only the most positive and warm memories remained about the trip.
It's a pity that Lena lives only in Lviv, and not in every city in Ukraine where we like to visit. Well, it's time to return home, we are waiting for a "pleasant" second dose of modernity there. But we realized one thing for ourselves, no matter how difficult the vaccination was (and the second dose was difficult for me in the end), this is many times less of a problem than what can be encountered during a real illness, even with a mild form. Travel and don't get sick!
