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Published: November 18th 2009
The rumor I heard were the Ukrainian authorities were trying to get more money from Holland America before we could disembark. Whether true or not we were about 90 minutes late before the six of us could board a tender after waiting for those who booked with the ship operated tours.
While waiting aboard the ship for our turn for a tender we could hear the announcements for ship operated tours and found it a little amusing to hear the call for the tour to Balaklava pronounced Baklava, sounds like a tasty place to go!
As each boat docked a small marching band would start to play and newly arrived passengers would crowd around and snap photos of the band. We quickly found our tour bus operators who were a little concerned about our late arrival. Yuri, our guide who was very knowledgeable seemed to have a nervous energy the entire day and much of his motivation seemed to be getting us back on schedule due to our late arrival.
We rode for a little less than an hour to inland on the Crimean peninsula to the town of Bakhchisaray to visit the Khan's Palace built in the
16 century. We had to work around a few large tour groups but it wasn't too crowded as we walked around the ground to see the mosque, haram (only 1 of 4 remain), a cemetery and several fountains and living quarters. As were were leaving through the Northern Gate there were ladies selling Baklava. I wish I had taken a picture as they were hard to describe the appearance but looked tasty. They looked like little cakes of pastry lightly covered in honey. They kept clear plastic over them but it was impossible to keep the honey bees off of them and they were crawling all over. Most of the locals in this area we were told were Tartars.
Nearby is the Uspensky Cave Monastery built around the 8th century where we went next. It would have been a long walk but since we were in a small shuttle and not one of the large buses our driver went a far as physically possible and was yelled at (Either in Ukrainian or Russian) by the guard there but I thought it was a nice gesture. Much more impressive than the cave monastery in Varna it's still active. Women are
required to wear a head covering so Kelly donned a blue scarf loaned to her. Closed during the Soviet era it has re-opened and was quite active and crowded with tourists. A small house across the valley was occupied and had chickens and goat in a small fenced in yard in front of the house. We stopped at a restaurant nearby and had a choice between lamb or noodle soup and by then our small group had been able to make up our time to get us back on schedule.
We returned to Sevastopol with only a few minutes to spare for our reserved time at the Panorama Museum depicting the Siege of Sevastopol during the Crimean War around 1855. Despite Yuri being able to give the tour by himself they only allow on staff guides to give the tour, in Russian, so Yuri became our interpreter. The Germans completely destroyed the town (along with the original Panorama Museum opened in 1905) during WWII so the museum was rebuilt and reopened in the 1970's.
The Panorama Museum was our last stop so we were dropped back off at the pier where we settled the remainder of cost of
the tour which was $95/person. The Ukraine and Russia tours were the most expensive in terms of time spent but were well worth it. Kelly and I wandered around the water front for a while. There are no deep Russian Black Sea ports so they lease space here in Sevastopol and there were quite a few buildings, monuments and museums that I wish we had more time to go visit, not to mention Yalta.
Link to Kodak Gallery Photos. Video Sevastopol from the Ship (YouTube). Click the HD button once video loads for 720 HD.
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Linda
non-member comment
Love the Trip
Am traveling through your eyes. Wonderful pictures and commentary.