Ukraine: Crimea: Sevastopol and yalta

The next weekend was also a long weekend because of another holiday...yippee!!!

I made sure to book train tickets well in advance, as I knew Crimea would be an area people want to visit, I didn't want to be stuck in kyiv with nowhere to go...

My train to Sevastopol took ages, almost 18 hours!! it wasn't expensive though...my arrival was late, but I didn't have any specific plans, so that didn't matter...I took a cab to my hotel, the driver charged me way too much...argh...he also gave me his card, and told me to call if i wanted a ride to go anywhere in sevastopol...um, NO...

After showering and getting rid of the feeling of travel, I started walking...I'd asked the hotel lady for directions, and though it took me a while to find a bus stop for the right bus, I eventually figured it out...

My first stop was a set mod Genoese ruins called chersonese/kersonese...the ruins aren't well protected, people walk everywhere...the ruins weren't super impressive, but I loved the view of the water...blue water going all the way to the horizon...I had fun taking photos and watching people...is it really necessary to take glamour shots next to ancient ruins? there are small rock beaches, and a few people in the water...my favourite part of the ruins was the huge number of red flowers all over...they are beautiful, but if they are not taken care of, they will destroy the ruins...

I took the same bus back into the city centre, then kept walking...as it was a holiday weekend, there were people out everywhere...I watched part of a concert by retired Russian sailors...it was the first time i've experienced such russian patriotism...there were plenty of cars driving through the city, honking and waving russian flags...
i noticed that the ice cream i often buy in kyiv costs twice as much here!!
wandering up this street gave me views of some of the russian ships in the port, and a couple memorials...i don't know what/who was being memorialized...

i had dinner at a bistro...(this is not a french word, though many people think so...it's a russian word that means fast, which is why bistros all over the world serve food quickly)...the food would've been awesome if it hadn't had so much mayonnaise slathered all over...
instead of grabbing a bus to get back to my hotel, i walked...it was long, but nice:)
the only problem with going to bed early is that you tend to wake up early as well...really early...which is not a great thing when you are on holiday, and want to have a lay in!! the price of my hotel included breakfast at a cafe next to the hotel...this was unexpected, but nice, of course...

i took a marshrutka to the town of balaklava...you have probably heard the name referring to the 'mask' some people wear while skiing, (or in cold climates during winter) and this town is where they were invented...little old ladies made them for soldiers fighting in wars in cold climates...i wasn't sure where to get off the marshrutka, so i got off when a heap of others got off...(i figured out later i could've stayed on a bit longer, but oh well)...
i walked for a while, not entirely sure i was going in the right direction, and eventually saw the entrance i was looking for...visitors go to balaklava mostly to see the former (secret, i think?) russian submarine base that is built into a hill...

it wasn't warm inside the tunnels of this base...quite chilly, actually...the sailors who stayed there must've worn warm clothes all the time, even in the middle of summer...the tunnels and various rooms had displays, with some of the signage in english...one docent kind of guy spoke a little english, and was eager to show me around...
on the other side of the bay (balaklava is built around a bay) are some ruins...the only way for me to get to the ruins was to walk all the way around the bay...there is no bridge across the water...
the other side of the bay was much more touristy...there were souvenir stalls the whole way along the water...i admit to giving in and buying a mug...(i'm always thrilled when i find something without english)...

i climbed up the hill to the ruins...they weren't anything special, but i did enjoy the views of the water on the other side...there was also a nice view over the entire bay...it turned out the climb up the hill was easier than the way back down...i slid quite a bit on the way down, falling on my bum a couple times...ooops...
i caught the marshrutka back to a station of sorts, and changed to another that took me to a place called cape fiolent...it's pretty, and the views of the water are nice...there are 700+ steps down to a small beach, which i opted not to do...not because the exercise would be too much, but because the beach was so very small, and i didnt think i would be able to see more from the bottom...there is a lovely monastery at the top of the hill...i wouldn't mind living there, just for the view alone:)
at the marshrutka station i bought a donut (well, sortof) and hopped on a marshrutka headed to the center of sevastopol...i walked back to my hotel and realized i was quite sunburned...ooops...

the next morning i didn't get out the door of my hotel nearly as fast as i should have...i ended up having to wait until 11 for a bus to yalta...i think the ride was around two hours, which meant i didn't arrive until 1300 or so...then it took me quite a while to find my hostel...the google map i'd printed had the wrong address marked, it was very wrong...i ended up walking quite a ways...it turned out not to be a normal hostel...i think it was a teaching hostel, if that makes any sense? hard to explain, but it definitely wasn't the normal hostel i expected...there was only one plug in a room with 14 beds! there was no communal room, no computers, etc...i was able to schedule dinner, which was nice...the bed was okay, i slept well...being so far from the city centre meant it was very quiet...

it took me a while to find the correct marshrutka to take me to the cable car at ay petri...last year, when i visited crimea, taking a ride on this cable car was something i missed, and really wanted to do during this trip...i was surprised at the price (60 grivna each way i think?) and i wasn't thrilled with the experience...maybe because i didnt give myself much time...if i had had more time i would've been able to hike/walk around the area up top, and explore more...the area just outside where you get off the cable car is filled with souvenir stalls...some with knickknacks, some with food...i walked through the area, then took the cable car back down...the skies were clear, but the views weren't as awesome as i had expected...

i caught the next marshrutka to a place called alupka...i don't know if it is a town or village or something along those lines?
i walked through a park to vorontsov palace...since i like to see historical places, i really wanted to see this palace...this was another place i'd missed during my first crimea visit...churchill and his delegation stayed here during the yalta conference of WWII...i liked this palace in that i was able to wander around on my own, i wasn't stuck taking a tour in a language i didn't understand...each room had a sign with information (in english and russian!) about the room...one of the rooms were more interesting than others, one was an indoor garden...i guess that was quite the rage when the palace was built...

there was haze, so i wasn't able to see the water; the palace is built in gardens that overlook the water...if i had had more time, i would've followed a trail that goes for several kilometers along the water...(my next visit to crimea will be planned better, with more attention paid to timing)...
when i got back to my hostel, the lady got my dinner ready, it was tasty:)
after dinner i walked into town to use the free wifi of mcdonalds...there was another chick in my room, already asleep...
the next morning i woke up before my alarm went off...the other chick was still asleep! i walked to the bus station, and bought an orange dreamsicle for breakfast...healthy, i know:)...it was at this bus station that i finally found postcards for sevastopol...why was i unable to find these in sevastopol itself?

on my bus to simferopol the lady sitting next to me seemed put out that i wanted to put my own bag under my feet, and she had to move her bag...did she think i would keep my bag on my lap while her bag was under my feet? this bus took me straight to the simferopol train station, which was a relief...not all the buses from yalta to simferopol do so, i wasn't keen to figure out how to get from the city centre to the train station...
in my coupe car back to kyiv there were three others, i think they'd been camping for days...based on how they smelled, i don't think they had showered for days...yuck...at least the train back to kyiv went on time...

hades riviera

The thing about going to sleep really early is you wake up pretty early the next morning...i was wide awake around 0600...it was light out, but i didn't want to get up yet...my normal alarm clock for work doesn't even go off until 0700!!

my mate cory is going to kill me if he ever reads this, because it's all about my very poor planning...well, more like complete lack of planning...the entire day my plans for what to see kept changing...if i'd figured out a proper itinerary at the beginning of the day i'd have been able to see quite a bit...as it was, i backtracked way too much...anywho...

since friday was the day after the official holiday, i hoped the post office would be open...i was wrong...so i'm still carrying around letters i've meant to mail for around a week now...argh...i really wanted to mail the letters...

my first place to see was livadia palace, i mentioned it in my previous post...i hopped on a marshrutka from a small bus station really close to my hotel...(again, the hotel was quite conveniently located)...i hopped off around 20 minutes later...i think...i'm not good at figuring out how much time has gone by...

i made my way to the kaca to buy my ticket, only to discover that i had arrived 40 minutes before the palace opened...oops...i should mention that it was snowing rather heavily, and i was cold, so this was not good news...there was nowhere indoors that i could see, so i walked toward the gardens, hoping to find a way to kill time...

that didn't work very well, but i did find the romanov family chapel (remember in the previous post when i mentioned that that family had owned this palace at one time?) so i was able to get inside for a few minutes...the chapel is quite small, not really what i was expecting for the family chapel of a tsar...not only the chapel of the tsar's family, but the chapel in which tsar nicholas took an oath of fidelity to russia...before going in i wrapped a scarf around my head, so i would be dressed appropriately...guys take off their hats when they go in orthodox churches, women cover their heads...hmmm...there was a service going on when i walked in, so i stood at the back and watched for a while...at 5 till 10 i walked back to the ticket lady and was able to purchase my entrance ticket...i think it's the most expensive place i've been in all of ukraine!!! almost $7!!!

to see livadia palace you have to join a tour...which is led in russian...there are no tours in any other languages...unless you've booked a private tour on your own? needless to say, i had no idea what was being said...at all...i heard a lot of words like angliski, americanski, and such, but i still didn't know what was being said...so i entertained myself by taking heaps of photos...the first room you see is the gala room, which is where all the plennary (sp?) meetings took place during the yalta conference...it's big and white with a fireplace at one end....you don't actually get to go in the room, you simply stand at one end and use your camera to zoom in on the table and fireplace at the other end...i wonder if it was the real table? How many translators were present at all those meetings? Were small items ever lost in the nuances of translation?

I don't know what the other rooms we saw were...the rooms on the ground floor were set up as they were during the yalta conference...(7-11 february 1945)...the rooms on the 2^nd floor were set up with exhibits of photos about the romanovs, the russian military, and other russian life...about half of those exhibits had english captions, so i was able to understand what i was seeing...it was while we were on this floor that i realized just how cold i was...this is mid march, and it's still pretty cold...the meetings of the yalta conference took place in mid february, how did they keep the place warm? In all the photos everyone has on warm coats, but i'm wondering if they wore those coats during the meetings as well? As cold as i was, there was no way you could've paid me to take off my coat...

this is where my lack of planning was just plain stupid...after the palace tour i caught the marshrutka back to yalta and ate lunch...a lovely little cafeteria style place right next to my hotel...from there i walked to alexander nevsky church...i'd seen a couple photos, and wanted to take my own photos...the outside of the church was far more interesting than the inside...the iconostasis was partly covered, as if it was under repair/renovation, and there was very little lighting...

from there i walked back to the wee little bus station, and caught another marshrutka going back the way i'd already been...i wanted to take a cable car up a ways to a place called the ay-petri plateau...i got off that marshrutka at 1455, only to see that the cable car was closed...the sign said they closed at 1500, and i was ahead of that, but apparently they didn't wait all the way to 1500 to close...darnit...if i'd gone from livadia straight to the cable car this wouldn't have been an issue...actually, what i should've done was taken the marshrutka as far as it would go in the morning, and seen vorontsov palace, where another of the yalta conference delegations stayed...(the brits i think?)...that palace is in alupka...then the cable car....but i didn't plan, and ended up missing those two...

from the missed cable car i took the marshrutka back toward yalta, hopping off at a place called the swallow's nest...it looks like a pretty fancy castle...it's really small, i didn't bother going in...it's the view of the castle that you go to see...the castle was built for a private owner, there is no historical value as far as i know...it sits on the edge of a cliff, it's really pretty...

then the marshrutka (i'm getting really tired of typing that word) back to yalta...i should've done all these things, then seen the church in town; i know i would've had plenty of time...originally i thought of walking a path from livadia to the cable car station, but the weather was such crap i didn't think i'd be able to see anything...so i guess i wouldn't have been able to see everything anywho, unless i'd done it all backward...if i ever get back to crimea i know what i'll want to see...in yalta anywho...

once back in the city i walked along the waterfront promenade again...crazy windy...still fun to watch people...i took a few photos of some of the statues, it had been too dark the night before...one of them was pushkin, i don't remember the others off the top of my head...

a lowkey dinner, another supermarket trip...i decided to try two drinks i hadn't had before, and was sorely disappointed...one of them appeared to be lemonade in a glass bottle...after nearly breaking my hand to get the cap off (why don't i carry a lighter?) i was gutted...it was a cream flavoured lemonade...not at all what i wanted...i really dont like the smell of cream drinks...yuck...the other was a fruit mix...i wasn't quite so gutted, but i wasnt impressed enough to finish it...darnit...

another early night...

a fortress in crimea

Maybe it's just me, but it seems like Ukraine doesn't have very many holidays...and by holidays, I mean days off work, not days like valentines day, or maslenitsa (a holiday to welcome spring)...international women's day (which I don't recall ever hearing about in the states) fell on thursday this year, (8 march) so the ukrainian government decided that everyone didn't have to work friday either, (though a make up day was 3 march...the make up day wasn't so fun, as it was a saturday, but i'm always happy to have a 4 day weekend)

since long weekends are few and far between, I decided to go far from kyiv...i took a night train 13 hours to simferopol, the capital of crimea, an autonomous republic in ukraine...crimea is now mostly ethnically russian, thanks to the soviets who deported all the locals way back when...crimeans only really started coming back from exile in siberia in the late 80s...eeek...when all of them were sent away, russia (USSR back then) moved its own people in and they're still here...when ukraine became independent 20 years ago, there was a squabble with russia about crimea, and that squabble is still going...currently there is a russian navy base in crimea, I believe their lease goes until 2042 (maybe longer?) or something like that...it was set to expire much earlier, but the current president is very pro-russia, so almost as soon as he took office, he extended the agreement by about 20 years...crimea is a peninsula on the southern coast of ukraine, sticking out into the black sea...

for the first time I had a 4 bed compartment on the train...it's 2^nd class I think, as opposed to 3^rd class which is what i've always had previously...there were fewer people, and a door could be closed, but in terms of the actual beds themselves, I didn't notice a difference...i ended up with these tickets because that's all that was left...the people in my compartment were quite nice...there was a kid in the compartment next door who whinged, a LOT...when the train was starting in kyiv he kept saying “papa I want …....”...over and over and over again...i don't know what it was he wanted, but I wanted papa to do something about it...as far as I could tell, papa wasn't even responding to him...in the morning the kid was running up and down the hall outside all the compartments...it ended up being pretty hot in my compartment, I woke up numerous times during the night because I was so hot...

simferopol is nicely set up for transportation...at least I think it is, because the train station is in the same place as the bus station...if I had been planning to stay in simferopol I wouldn't have said that, because the stations aren't close to the city center, but for a quick get out of town, I was happy...i got off the train, and 5 minutes later I was on a bus...it was a small bus, and as I learned quickly, rather old...the engine had very little energy...we spent a lot of time going really slowly, as very little speed was to be had on hills of any kind...plus, it was snowing...weather I did not expect...at all...the same kind of snow we've had in kyiv for the last couple months!! it's clearly been cold here the entire time it's been cold up north, there was plenty of snow already on the ground...is it normal for crimea to have all this snow in winter?

my first destination in crimea...sudak...it's known for a genovese fortress...the fortress overlooks the water, which is quite pretty...lonely planet doesn't have a map for sudak, as it's a smaller town, so I used google maps and printed one for myself...with that map it was easy to find the fortress...as I walked through sudak I passed heaps of people selling flowers for the holiday...it seemed like every guy on the street was either carrying a bouquet, or selling flowers...they take this holiday seriously!!

the genovese captured the city in 1365 (it's on the great silk road, the city was fought over for hundreds of years) and in 1371 started work on the fortress...it's still in good shape, especially the towers...the towers all have names, none of which mean anything to me...they're all named for various consuls who ruled for a year at a time...

it took me a while to find the entrance to the fortress...it's on a hill, and you can see all sorts of paths going around the hill...clearly people spend a lot of time on this hill, probably in warmer times of year...i followed some of those paths, but they kept taking me to closed doors...argh...eventually I found the ticket kasa, and entered...the outer walls and towers are still in good repair, but there isn't much inside...hmmm...still, I followed all the walls, and climbed where I could...

as I walked back through town, the weather was much more pleasant...no more snow and driving wind...the sun had come out and dried things up a bit as well...at the bus station I asked for a ticket to yalta, the guidebook said it was possible...but the ticket lady said no, and sent me back to simferopol instead...oh well...the ride back was heaps faster, thanks goodness...in simferopol I was able to jump on a bus to yalta almost immediately...

yalta has been popular with russians in particular because of it's humid climate...for rich aristocrats with delicate health, doctors always told them to go to crimea...yalta in particular I guess...yalta is known as one of the places those rich kids came...there are heaps of nice dachas all over the city...there is also a statue of lenin, a lovely promenade along the sea, and lots of shopping...the city is in a natural “bowl” surrounded by the mountains or water...

yalta is known for another historical reason...in 1945, near the end of world war 2, the “big three” met here to divide europe...that is, divide it up as to who would have the most influence in government in each country...the US delegation was led by FDR, who wasn't easily able to move around, so all the meetings took place in the palace where the americans stayed...the brits were led by winston churchill...the soviets were led by joseph stalin...it was in yalta that stalin got his wish to control most of eastern europe...during this set of meetings, the UNO (United Nations Organization, which I believe is now headquartered in new york, and known as the UN) was also founded...interestingly enough, the Ukrainian SSR was recognized as one of the founding republics of the UNO...

the americans stayed in an estate/palace called livadia, which was originally built (or bought) by the romanov family..yup, the romanovs that were shot to death a few years later...livadia palace is the biggest palace in crimea...i'm not sure if that means anything or not...the brits stayed in vorontsov palace, and the soviets in yusupov palace...

enough history for the moment...my bus arrived, and I was again thankful for good placement...the bus station was on a main street, and though the map didn't show the bus station, it was easy to follow the street all the way to the center of town...yalta is well set up for walking, I guess that's what all those sick people spent hours doing every day back when...i found the hotel I was looking for pretty easily, and got myself a single room (though it has two single beds?) for around $12...woo hoo...i know this isn't high season, but it is a holiday weekend, and the hotel is really well located...the front desk clerk spoke enough english, and was nice...

I ditched my bag and headed to the promenade, to watch people as much as anything...it was just over freezing, but there were heaps of people out walking...it got dark quickly, darnit...people were rollerblading and riding bikes...there are a bunch of carnival type games set up on this promenade, if I were traveling with someone we definitely would've tried our hand at a few...it's not the same when you're by yourself...

after walking and eating, my next goal was a supermarket...the hotel doesn't have breakfast, and i've gotten in the habit of eating in the mornings over the past few months...(i've never been a regular breakfast person unti this year for whateva reason)...since it was dark I wanted to find a supermarket quickly and get back inside...of course it took me a while to find a place even though as I was walking into town from the bus station I could've sworn i'd seen heaps of places...argh...

the only problem with traveling when it's still pretty much winter is that the sun goes down pretty early, and leaves you with long evenings, and nothing to do...