No Room At The Inn

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We didn't bother with breakfast this morning as we believed that a sleep-in would be more worthwhile. We got up after a couple of wake up alarms and packed rather quickly. When we went to checkout we were accused of stealing two towels which I did not stand for it at all. I did get an apology but it did leave us with a bad taste in our mouths.

We caught a trolleybus back to the bus station but somehow managed to miss the stop and ended up getting off at a random stop to go back in the correct direction. We ended up catching the same bus back towards the bus station much to the amusement of the bus driver.

We had read in the guidebook that the trolleybus from Yalta to Simferopol was the longest in the world and decided to take it. Waiting in the station a man in a Boro shirt walked past us. I tried to talk to him but he didn't speak English so I'm unsure as to whether he actually supported the Boro whether he just acquired the shirt. (i think the latter makes more sense) whichever way it was rather unusual to see an English football shirt in this part of the Ukraine let alone in Yalta bus station.

The journey to Simferopol was long and the views were rather hidden behind curtains that were being used to hide from the sun. We can however say that we have been on the world’s longest trolleybus (approx 80km) for what that is worth.

The station that we arrived at in Simferopol was as far away from our chosen hotel as was possible to see on our map. Not entirely sure about the distance we decided to walk it. Another bad decision on our behalf. The further we walked the further away we realised the hotel was. We only knew of two affordable hotels which were both far away and we had no information or way of finding out about buses there. It took us two hours to walk to Hotel Moskva which we pretty much collapsed outside of. We enquired about their cheapest double which they said was £34. We already had been told that their most expensive rooms were around £25 so we refused straight away. It was obvious that we were going to be ripped off because we arrived just before sunset, tired, with backpacks at a hotel a long way from the centre and spoke no Russian. I had few hopes that they wouldn't but I guess that was too naïve.

Rob ran up to another hotel whilst I sat and minded the bags. Whilst I was sitting there a beautiful cat came and sat on my lap which I didn't object to at all. Hotel Turbaza Tavriya gave Rob a fair price, so we trekked up there. We were told to sit in the waiting room of the hotel, but we felt so out of place. We were both hot and sticky and in our scruffy clothes whilst the people around us were all in suits.

We were in our room for a matter of minutes before heading to the bus station to buy our tickets for tomorrow’s journey to Odessa. We succeeded using our tried and tested method of writing it down and handing it over.

From the station we walked the forty-five minute route back to the town centre. Almost immediately inside the centre we spotted a cute little restaurant with an extensive menu in English so in we went. The waiter had just finished a course in English so wanted to chat a little. We chatted about music and bands but we were really hungry so he let us eat. We were happy where we were so we stayed and had a ridiculously cheap champagne cocktail.

Back at the hotel we gathered together the few things we'd had time to unpack and fell asleep pretty quickly. It was such a long day and we both really needed to sleep.

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Photos

World Longest Trolly Bus Journey
Not the quickest though!

Steph resting
Also calculating that we have another 3km to walk with our backpacks.

Comments

[Kate]

cats
We were reluctant to let you stroke cats in France and here you are petting every stray that you possibly can!! Mmm...