Spring Break Part 2 - Yalta

So, we caught a bus to Port Kavkas. It's not a very long distance from Sochi to Port Kavkas, but it's a long bus ride because of the winding mountain roads. We were on the bus all night, and at one of our stops we saw this winner: the Fart Casino.


Unfortunately we didn't have any time to play slots there. We arrived in Port Kavkas around 5 AM and realized that it's not really a city at all. There were concrete walls with barbed wire all around, and not much else. It was a pretty intimidating sight, especially since it was still dark out, but soon we spotted the "Морской Вокзал" sign and headed that way. We were able to catch a ferry across the water as the sun was rising.


We landed in the city of Kerch and went through Ukrainian customs. One guard started chatting with me after he realized I was a foreigner who could speak Russian. He asked me where in America I was from and when I said Minnesota, he said, "Oh, Minnesota Timberwolves!" It was nice to know that a guy in Kerch knows something about my beloved state.

From Kerch we caught a bus to Simferopol, a transportation hub, and then finally made it from there to Yalta. We rented a nice two-room apartment from a girl who studies in Kiev and then headed out to explore the city. Yalta is beautiful, surrounded on three sides by mountains and overlooking the sea. There are shaggy trees and vines crawling all over, giving it kind of a mysterious feel. There are lots of fruit stands and little shops, but no big supermarkets (none that we saw, anyway).

The next day, our only full day in Yalta, was absolutely beautiful. We spent most of it on excursions outside the city. Our first stop was Livadia Palace. It was owned by Nicholas II, the last tsar of Russia, and was the site of the Yalta Conference in 1945, attended by Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin. The palace overlooks the sea and is surrounded by beautiful gardens and woods.


Here are Sara and I solemnly remembering three great leaders.


The inside of the palace is a museum that contains information about the Yalta Conference and the tsar's family. This is one of the rooms where Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill met:


And this is the courtyard where they had the famous picture of them taken:


After eating ice cream and blini, we caught a bus back to town and another bus out farther from the city to Alupka, where the Vorontsov Palace is located. We didn't know anything about the history of this place, but wandering around its beautiful grounds and gazing out at the sea, we didn't care.





On the way back we hit up another famous castle, called the Swallow's Nest. It's in a stunning location, but even though it was built almost 100 years ago, we thought it looked like something out of Disneyland.



On our last day in Yalta we went down to the main square near the sea. Overlooking the square are both Lenin:


and McDonalds:


We took a ride on the cable cars and got a good look at the city.


But this sign made it very clear to us that you can't just stay on the cable cars and ride forever.

That afternoon we caught a bus back to Simferopol and from there an overnight train to Odessa. Next time: Odessa and bonus: the breakaway republic of Transneister.

Spring Break, Part One: Sochi

For the small handfull of people who actually read and enjoy my blog, I'm sorry I haven't posted for so long. We had a crazy last week of the spring semester, then break, and now we're in the first week of the summer semester. I had a great spring break trip to Sochi, Yalta, and Odessa with Sara and Eric, but it's a lot to write about, so I'll start out with Sochi.

Sochi is the main Russian Black Sea tourist destination, and a canditate for the 2014 Winter Olympics. The train ride from Moscow to Sochi was about 27 hours long. 27 long hours long, because our whole train car (we were in the lowest class, without separate compartments) was filled with a children's folk dancing group. At best, they were playing endless games of Go Fish, at worst, they were running around, yelling, and playing one song over and over on their cell phones. We did meet one couple from Moscow who were not associated with this group, and they invited us to join them for a little party in a tiny compartment at the end of the train car, past the bathroom.

That thing the woman is holding is a whole dried fish. We were originally wary about these fish, which many old grandmothers were selling at every stop, but it turned out to pretty good, just really salty.

When we started out on our trip, we really didn't have any plans, hotel reservations, or bus tickets between cities. But it never turned out to be a problem. When we arrived in Sochi we went with the first guy who said he was renting rooms. We turned down the first place he showed us, but the second one was great -- a nice room with a little outdoor kitchen and patio. This was our view:

Here are Sara and Eric out on the patio, deep in concentration. Chess and the aptly named card game "Oh Hell" were our entertainment staples on the trip.

The first day in Sochi we just walked around near the sea. Sara and I did a little Russian-stlye photo posing:
And here's me with Posiedon:

I also joined a delightful statue band.


The best sites in Sochi are actually outside the city, so we wanted to take some excursions. We looked around for an excursion company and found this winner:

We asked the Excursion "TIT" representative if we could take one of their excursions to the breakaway region of Abkhazia, but unfortunately, they don't take Americans there because it's difficult to get them across the border (Russia supports this region's independence from Georgia, so Russians can go there). So we settled on the standard Krasnaya Polyana excursion that's advertised in this picture (don't worry, our desire to visit a breakaway region was satisfied later on the trip, watch for the story in future posts).

The day of the excursion was rainy and cold, but we had a fun time. We were in a van full of Russians and a tour guide who got very angry if anyone started whispering amongst themselves and wasn't listening to him. We drove past numourous decadant sanatoriums and then outside the city into the foggy mountains.

At one stop I got to demonstrate the power of my famous oxen legs.

After a visit to a bee farm and lots of honey tasting, we came to Krasnaya Polyana. There were a couple pricey options for going up the mountain: the ski lift, which wasn't worth it because the fog would obscure all the nice views; and driving around in a Jeep. All the people in our group chose the Jeeps, but we cheap Americans chose to go as far as we could on foot, in the rain. It was a nice walk, despite the rain, and we felt a sense of accomplishment when we got high enough to see snow.

The next day, our last in Sochi, was May 1st, Russian Labor Day. We caught a gathering of Communists in front of a Lenin statue.


The day was beautiful, and we went outside the city again to a see a series of waterfalls called "Змейка" (snake). We bought a bottle of homemade wine at the bottom and started up.

There were lots of different waterfalls and places to explore. We took our time, enjoyed the weather and the scenery, and it ended up being one of our favorite times from the whole trip.




After the waterfalls, we had an obligatory McDonalds stop (Sochi has a beautiful McDonalds), and then got on the bus to Port Kavkas. We didn't know anything about Port Kavkas, but it looked like the closest place to the Crimea that we could get to. Stay tuned for part two of the spring break posts: Yalta.