Yalta - Peace!

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It took just over 12 hours on the train to get from Odesa to Simferopol. Despite being very comfortable compared to Azerbaijani trains, we still didn’t sleep well! At the station we found somewhere for a McBreakfast before buying tickets on the World’s longest and slowest trolleybus. From Simferopol to Yalta is just 85km but it took almost 3 hours. It’s a nice route but after the first 90 minutes we just wanted to get there!

There doesn’t seem to be an awful lot of choice when it comes to hotels anywhere on the Crimean peninsula. We took a taxi from Yalta’s bus station to the Hotel Krim in the centre. There we waited for 15 minutes and it seemed we were no closer to being seen to so we left. We weren’t sorry to walk out though as we had already figured out there was only hot water for a couple of hours in the evening and we needed a shower NOW! It wasn’t easy to find anything else though and we ended up taking a chance on a guy sat beside the road with a sign saying he had rooms to rent. The rooms were not too pleasant but he also had an apartment and we ended up staying there for 4 nights. It was cheap and cheerful and situated next door to a strip club but it was good enough for us! It even had a sunny balcony so we could do a bit of tanning in the afternoons (and get our washing dry!).

Yalta is a place where Russians still go for a bit of rest and relaxation. Walking along the seafront boulevard is a popular pastime as is having your photo taken under the statue of Lenin. It’s quite nice there around sunset when the sky turns a multitude of colours and you soon lose sight of the gargantuan cruise ships at the jetty. Parts of it are a bit like Margate though. Ironically Yalta is actually twinned with Margate!

We took a boat ride out along the coast. The sea was a bit choppy (about at Trish’s limit) but the views of the various buildings along the coast were worth it. The excursion went as far as the Swallow’s Nest turreted folly which is now used as an Italian restaurant. The pictures you see of it are fantastic but it was disappointingly small in real life.

The Botanical Gardens are located several kilometres to the East of Yalta. We were going to walk there and got a few km out of town before deciding to flag down a bus. We were pleased we did because, whilst the views of vineyards by the sea are nice, we think we rather miscalculated just how long it was going to take us! The gardens were cheap to enter but then you have to pay extra for everything inside: butterfly garden, reptile house, hedge maze, orchid house, cactus garden etc. If you paid for everything it would work out quite expensive which was a shame. The colours are beginning to fade as the flowers wilt in the early autumn but it was still a pleasant escape from the city.

There’s not a great deal to see within Yalta itself. We enjoyed our trip up the cable car but there’s not much at the top and the views are obscured by the evergreen trees. It’s quite a challenge getting in and out though and watching others do that can be rather entertaining!! There’s also Chekhov’s House but we didn’t make it there so we can’t comment!

Not far from Yalta is the Livadia Palace. Once a royal summer retreat for the Tsar and his family, the palace is perhaps better known as the seat of the Yalta Conference in 1945. That’s when Winston Churchill met with Stalin and Roosevelt to discuss the carve-up at the end of World War II and this essentially sowed the seeds which grew into the Cold War. Thanks guys!!

The palace is well worth the entrance fee as you get to wander freely around almost all of the rooms which are well laid out. Downstairs is dedicated to the Yalta Conference whilst upstairs is mostly to do with the life of the Tsarist monarchy. It has a bit of a National Trust feel to it but it’s nice to see that everything is being well looked after for posterity.

The gardens were a little disappointing but that may have been down to the time of year. We walked through the woods all the way down to the Sanatorium beach. Then we walked back up the 700 steps unlike those who were there for their health - they took the shuttle bus!!

An additional fee gains you entry to the temporary display of waxworks models on loan from Saint Petersburg. This was a bit disappointing but at least all the information was in English! The models of the conference trio didn’t look particularly lifelike but it was nice to see each leader sat underneath his country’s flag. Next door the portrait session of the Romanov family was in progress. Their models looked hauntingly real. Some evocative music would have made it much better. Ra-ra-Rasputin looked on from the side.

There were other things we could have seen and done so we at least have the option to return to Yalta in the future. We may well do that!

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