Yalta Intourist Hotel

... buildings left belonging to Russia and the Russian Black Sea Fleet is still stationed there. In fact, I went into Russia just down the street from the main square in Sevastopol. Didn't know it was so close, did you? Well, I didn&#8217;t either and luckily I didn&#8217;t need a visa to stroll through a small portion of "Russia on the Black Sea".<br><br> He told me many tales of when he was a Naval Officer and serving in the ...

... dat ik aan tafel werd verwacht voor ontbijt. Struikelend over een afgebroken riek, 3 kippen en een gans, kom ik op de binnenplaats waar een prachtig gedekt tafetje staat met 4 bordjes en heel veel lekker eten. Even voor de duidelijkheid lieve mensen, het is 7uur in de ochtend dus de lezers die mij een beetje kennen weten nu genoeg ;-) Deze 2 mensjes zijn echt te schattig! We moeten lekker gaan zitten en krijgen een bord soep ...

... by their sons and daughters, living off tourists who rent their rooms put up with their incessant lip and rules. <br>Indeed we have found an agent, a sexy older lady who took us to one of the grandmutters, who told us her rules, up by nine and out by 12, shower with the curtain closed, shoes off and in the shoe-cupboard. Dak. Dak dak dak. Her words not mine. So with a quick shower, we proceeded to take a hipflask full of vodka out with us for a walk, and went down to the ...

... good. We went back to the rest of the people, and finally went to the sea. The secret and in the same time the "hardcore" of our trip to sea was that we wanted to have a "wild trip" thats mean that we should stay in a place which is nor designed for beaching and in general to do something like a nomad camping. Now we were heading toward a beach, located inside a park, for this we entered ilegal, through a break into the wall, had a hard trip going down from a hill ...

... back at the hotel I realized that while the 4 Hryvnia a beer I was paying wasn't bad, the sticker on the can said 2. I guess that's why he had been so excited to see me, for every beer I bought, he got one for free! I had to just laugh at that one. I started to pack up and get ready for my departure back to Kiev in the morning. I'm going to miss Yalta, I really hope I make it back here sometime. I absolutely love it. One day. Next time though, I'll learn some Russian first!

... do the area any justice. Even looking at them now, they don't even begin to show have amazing the place was. The walk/hike/frog leap took about 6 hours. At the end there was even a guy with 2 horses walking across the river. It was an unbelievable trip! So glad I trusted the group to be there and handed over the $10 yesterday!! After we were finished in the woods, they took us to a Tatar (a Turkish ethnic group in the Crimea) restaurant for a bit of food. I had a bit of a chat ...

... most of it reading Malcom Bradbury's "Doctor Crimanale," which of course you should rush out and buy, too. After tomorrrow's excursion, I'll have one more day in tourist heaven and then another driver will take me to the airport in Simferopol on Wednesday to catch my flight back to Kiev. Bonus advice: Never order a martini in Yalta. It did contain gin but was drowned in vermouth and came in a highball glass with a slice of lemon and two olives. Something has been lost in translation.

... beach is made of large rocks, and it's just not all that nice.....but this is it, this is where every citizen of the USSR would hope to finally get a chance to go one day, for the greatest vacation of their lives. Now it's still a resort, complete with McDonald's just across the square from a statue of Lenin.

... some tourists to Bakchysaray in fog much like this. When they came to the main medieval gate to park, it had slowly swung open and Tatar warriors in their helmets and bristling with lances and sabers began to emerge on horseback through the chowdery fog. Several dramatic moments passed before they realized someone was filming a movie there that day. He also recalled being about 12 years old and coming into his hometown to find red Nazi flags hung from the palace's walls ...

... most efforts to capture them with cameras showed only water and blurs, but thanks to our colleague Clark for these shots with a telephoto lens). Seeing where the Yalta conference was held and hearing some of the details behind-the-scenes was fascinating (like the many hours it took to travel there by land from ...