MoldovAnn

The road trip to Crimea was an awesome whirlwind. We left Kyiv around 9pm Wednesday evening. San (short for Aleksander) took the first long stretch of driving. We stopped about 3am for a short break, and the first streaks of light were just breaking through the darkness of night. Oh how I love the long summer days in Ukraine! I took the wheel at 5 am, and it was full sunshine already.

I love the steppe – “the amber waves of grain” couldn’t be more breathtaking than in the Crimean steppe. A photo just can’t quite capture the real beauty, but we certainly tried! There were these lovely strips of blue, yellow, white and red in the fields – huge patches of blooming wild flowers, lavender, chamomile and poppies.

So many poppies! It was like a red sea. That red strip beyond the town is just one of dozens of poppy fields we saw in full bloom.

No, they’re not “those kinds” of poppies. You can’t make from heroin from these, despite the fact that Igor looks like he just got a good dose of something. Wishful thinking, maybe.

We hit Simferopol, the capital of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, about 9am, just in time for morning rush hour. Simferopol is pretty much a nasty dump plunked down in the middle of the lovely penisula. We passed through as quickly as possible.

On the other side of Sim, we passed out of the steppe and into the mountains.

We stopped several times throughout the day to just enjoy the lush scenery.

I have no idea what I’m so excited about in this photo, but something seems to have caught my attention.

Maybe it was this cherry tree.

We all ate our weight in cherries over the course of those three days. We stopped at nearly every roadside stand and bought fresh-picked cherries 2-3 kilograms at a time. Yum!

We enjoyed the wildlife, too. Saw lots of geikos

one adorable hedgehog that I followed into a field

some crazy bugs

and one red fox (roadkill, unfortunately).

We found this gorgeous place about a kilometer from the main road.

Just one little village nestled in a valley, and this beautiful lake surrounded by forest. The villagers told us there are some cabins in the woods, and people go camping there, but otherwise it’s a protected area. It was quite possibly the cleanest area I’ve ever seen in Ukraine – not a lick of trash in the water or along the banks, and in the kilometer or so that we walked around the lake, I saw only one or two discarded vodka bottles. I was really impressed.

Day 1 ended about 60 hours after it started (at least it felt that long), with this beautiful sunset.

We spent the night in Bakhchisarai, in a nice little dump of a hotel.

Friday morning we got up early and headed to the Cave Monastery and Cave City on the edge of Bakhchisarai. After about a 30-minute hike up the hill, we were at the cave city and fortress.

Gotta love my cave man.

The surrounding view is the best part, and worth the huff and puff to get up to the fortress.

We stopped for a quick bite at a dumpy shop/cafe, and the guys decided to try the house wine.
San had me the car keys, and they had another glass. And then they ordered a bottle. At some point they noticed the weird display of military hats on sale. That’s when the fun started.

This helmet reminds me of the martian in a Bugs Bunny cartoon.

I especially like the “50 hrivna” sticker.

After that liquid lunch, I drove the drunks northwest, past Evpatoria. We stumbled on some kind of space observation station in north-western Crimea, with 6 or 7 massive antenna dishes all pointing straight up.


We asked about the place in the neighboring village and learned that it used to be a military base. Now it’s a civil space observation station. I would have loved to see if we could get in and be allowed to tour the grounds, but I was voted down.

It was unfortunately too cold to go swimming, but how can you go to the sea and not at least get your feet wet?

And you have to play in the sand.

We had originally planned to drive down to the south coast for the night, but it was getting late and we were all too tired for a 2-3 hour drive, so we decided on a lark to see if we could get a couple rooms at Uglovoye, the seaside village where Igor and I have visited the past 2 years. Although officially not open for the season yet, the administrator took pity on us and let us stay the night. We had a fantastic and huge meal in the village cafe, and rushed back to the hotel just in time to get a shower with hot water – my first in 2 days! Nothing feels quite as good as a good scrub and a clean head.

Saturday morning we took a leisurely drive south, to Ai Petri, the famous mountain towering over Yalta. You can ride a suspended cable car up the 1500-meter high mountain from the Yalta-side, but we drove up from the other side. It was a beautiful drive, albeit slow. It took nearly an hour to cover the 10-15 kilometers of serpentine road. The views were fantastic. We stopped for lunch about half way up at a cafe with tables out over the mountain river. Pretty cool, I thought.

They had the music blaring, though, which sort of took away from the beauty and peacefulness of relaxing along the river. Thankfully, they turned it off without a fuss when we asked them to.

Ai Petri is breathtaking (I’m running out of ways to describe all the beautiful places we saw!).

The only minus is the assault you have to endure when arriving by car. Between the parking lot and the lookout point you have to run through a gauntlet of obnoxious and aggressive vendors, restauranteurs, and camels. Yes, camels. You can take a camel ride at the top of a mountain in Crimea. The vendors and camel-ride hawkers (all men) reminded us immediately of the obnoxious vendors in Egypt. We hurried past as quick as we could.

Here’s that cable car

We drove back all night Saturday. I had the late shift, from about 2:30 until we finally arrived at our apartment in Kyiv, about 6:30. We hauled ourselves up the four flights and collapsed into bed. Exhausted, but what a great trip!

All the photos are here.