After a good night's sleep we had a really nice day milling around L'Viv. The Old town was a revelation (think old atsmospheric buildings, large squares etc) however the most surprsing thing we saw was the totally ridiculous amount of weddings (and correspoinding brides/grooms). Everywhere you looked you saw another meringue either posing for the photographer or nervously waiting to go into one of the many churches. Saad suggested that if we stood still and did a 360, we would have been able to see at least 8 wedding dresses.
After a not very hearty lunch we failed to see the FA cup final as it wasn't on any of the 54 Russian TV channles. (Even the ubiquitous Irish bar failed us.)
We did however stumble across the annual meeting/showing off session of the "hooligan" bike club and sauntered over to say hello. There were over 100 bikes of all viarieties (mainly big Jap sports bikes though) and their garish club T shirts would have had the fashion police all over them. I honestly expected a little bit of back slapping and hero worshiping when we explained our trip so far but was firmly put in my place when the guy I was speaking to stated that he was at Silverstone last week and was planning to ride to Daytona next month. Serious hard core.

I had the pleasure of taking one of the receptionists on the back of my bike as he showed me to the secure car park (our bikes on the pavement were creating a bit of a stir). He was at least 6 ft 5 and 20 stone. The already "interesting" handling characteristics of my overladen bike (panniers, tent etc) were made 1000% worse and I felt like I was driving a drunken giraffe on rollerskates as we crashed and banged our way across the square.

After a snooze we went to a bar recommended by Lonely Planet only to find the self same "hooligans" more than living up to their name. Clearly they had taken over the bar, unleashed their lady friends and were having a gay old time drinking, eating and being a tiny bit on the phsycopathic side. They were all inches away from being legless, the music was seriously loud, the band warming up looked on nervously and the male stripper (wider than a bus and more muscles than a sea bed) was clearly enjoying himself (as were the ladies). Saad dragged me away before the female stipper arrived - (his need for regular food has a lot to answer for).

Food and a few beers and we were off to bed, ready for our short blast across the border to Krakow. Or so we thought. 195 miles sounds short but throw in a border crossing (actually quite painless - approx 1 hr) and a deluge that had us retreating to a BP cafe and some really crappy roads/traffic and we were in the saddle for 7 hours.

The only real incident of note was a Polish biker that tagged on to us, got in my way really annoyingly, almost crashed into the back of Saad's bike and then fell off. I was not exactly rushing to help him pick up his bike (or pride) but we did check that he was OK and watched as he wobbled into the distance.

Richard