Yalta, Sevastopol and more

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Geo: 44.5144, 34.1757

Sorry, got a bit behind with the blog posting and the photos, so here comes a catch up. We
have had three days, or is it four, depends how you count those days when you arrive early on an overnight train, on the Crimean coast and have done a lot, despite hot sweaty rides in matruskahs (minibus to you and me). We went to Chekovs house here in yalta and were in the very room in which he wrote Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard. He spent his last years here, with lots of visitors like Rachmaninov before going off to Germany for treatment for his tb and never returning, dead at 44.. His sister continued to live in the house and turned it into a museum. They love roses here, Chekov planted 100 in his garden and a nearby botanical garden we visited had hundreds of varieties, all labelled with Russian or English names as appropriate, Sophia Loren looked a bit spindly.
As an easy way to get around we joined a Russian language tour to the palace where they held the yalta conference (Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin) and the nearby palace where Churchill stayed. It was interesting and a bit of a hoot because the guide, who initially seemed a bit daunted by having non Russian speakers on her tour soon got into the swing of finding English stuff for us to read. That tour ended at the Swallows Nest, a mock mini Castle perched on top of some cliff, built by a German count for his mistress, and a boat ride home with dolphins bobbing up and down in the distance. Then today to Sevastopol and back to see the original Greek settlement, the Black Sea Fleet Museum (Russian only) and the like.
Hotel has been a mix of the good and the downright awful. Like being served a bottle of Italian white wine that was well past its best at 8 years old
That's a quick summary, lots of sunshine, lots of walking, tomorrow afternoon the train to Odessa which gets in the following morning at about 5am, how uncivilised can you get?
Photos to follow

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