If It’s Monday,,,and Tuesday...and Wednesday..It Must Be Ukraine!

Odessa in the Ukraine, with its 200,000 stray dogs, was very interesting.  You probably read about it.  But next was Sevastopol...and then Yalta.  In other words, we were getting our fill of Ukraine.  Frankly, they were so Russian-like and had all formerly been in the USSR ...and spoke Russian in addition to Ukrainian...and loved the former USSR, they all seemed the same to us!  If you’ve seen on Ukrainian port, you’ve seen them all...sorta!

So, when it came to Sevastopol, I won.  We decided to stay on board and relax a bit.  Of course, we could see the shore and the port.  But the rest of Sevastopol was all military stuff, like these shore trips:  Crimean Battlefields, Balaclava, Black Sea Navy.  See what I mean??  And the MEN, when they got back on board, were delighted with the troops coming over the hill, the battlements, the way guns were facing.  We, on the other hand, enjoyed 4 p.m. tea with delightful little sandwiches and sweet stuff!  And then we played trivia.  Unfortunately, even with Bos’s Vast File of Fairly Useless Information, we still lost.  One question, something about carrying bones of saints around, we felt was UNFAIR!  We knew reliquary (from Betsy’s love of reliquaries!), but the answer was something that began with “f”.  

Next day: Yalta.  Yalta is where Churchill, FDR and Stalin met to plan the end of WWII and how the world would be divided up.  Actually, Yalta is a seaside resort with lots of high rise hotels and apartments.  They call it the “Riviera of the Black Sea.”  It had first been a Greek colony, then a Byzantine port in the 12th century, then became a Genoese trading colony in the 14th century, when it was called Etalita or Galita.  Those warlike Ottomans took over in 1475 and the Russian Empire captured it in 1783, along with the rest of the Crimean peninsula.  This was, in fact, the spark to begin the RUsso-Turkish war in 1787-1792!

After that it became a very fashionable resort for the Russian aristocracy and gentry with writers like Leo Tolstoy (“War and Peace”)and Anton Chekhov (“The Cherry Orchard”) spending their summers here. 

We saw lots of palace -- too many palaces, if I’m honest!  Alexander III built the Massandra Palace, which was used by Stalin for his vacations,  and the last Tsar, Nicholas II, built the Livadia Palace here in 1911, right before the family was massacred. The Lividia palace is where the Yalta Conference was held in 1945.  So we saw the table and chairs used, Roosevelt’s bedroom, etc.   I was most interested in this palace, as I became fascinated with the Russian tsars after my LLI class on Catherine the Great and Peter the Great.  

BUT when it came to the third palace, Vorontsovsky Palace, I gave up. This was just a palace of a rich man who summered there. And whenever the Europeans say it is a “short walk”, beware!  That could be a mile or two and usually with steep inclines!  I got halfway up the hill to the V-Palace and could not see the end with more hills to come -- and decided to sit down on a rock wall and watch the people. I watched Mercedes after Mercedes climb that darn hill with sightseers inside.  But not us.  Our bus parked at the bottom and wanted all of us to “soldier” up “Mt Everest”. I was a little embarrassed not to struggle up, as our bus included people with canes who were struggling.  But not me -- I gave up!  The fun part was: when all our people got down the hill no one knew we hadn’t been up to the top and we talked “knowledgeably” about it to everyone!

Next up wine-tasting.  We had to try 10 glasses of Crimean wine.  Needless to say, we were quite tipsy when it was over.  Was it good?  Well, two things:  it doesn’t matter how bad it is after a half glass; it all tastes the same.  And the simple answer: NO!  But some of the guests bought bottles, which was the point, I guess!

During the 20th century Yalta was the premier vacation spot for Russia, as the Russians really could not easily go outside the USSR.  In fact, in 1920 Lenin issued a decree “On the Use of the Crimea for the Medical Treatment of the Working People” and the government would pay 70% of the vacation to this area for tired proletariats.  In addition, the government built numerous sanitariums around the area for people with lung and heart problems, which still exist today.

The area is beautiful and VERY hilly, with resorts perched on the precipices overlooking the Black Sea.  It reminded us of our drives along the Mediterranean in the south of France and Monaco.  

One thing we remembered from a previous trip to St. Petersburg: a disgruntled Russian tour guide complained that now that the Ukraine was a separate country, they needed a visa to go to the beaches on the Black Sea and that was a lot of trouble and expense!! Funny, huh!