After a more than adequate breakfast at our Simferopol hotel, Olga and I decided to make our journey along the coast from Yalta and travel west. The sun was strong and the sky was blue, so we headed straight into a traffic jam.
Crimea is very popular during the summer months with Russians and Ukrainians, and Yalta is the most popular destination of all, so we joined the queue and left Simferopol. We hadn’t traveled very far when we saw a large abandoned house and decided to take a look.
Crimea reads with reminders of both its history and the legacy of its conquerors. It would seem that the period during which the Italians occupied this country was one of good times and some grander and they left behind them many fine houses and large and small mansions. These houses share a style and age (approximately 200-300 years) and were clearly very beautiful in their day and a stark contrast to much of the Soviet/Russian construction that would follow years later. In defense of the Soviets they were faced with the enormous task of rebuilding their country in the immediate aftermath of World War II and the priority was to build as many houses as possible as quickly as possible, a task which they clearly accomplished with great success. This build hasn’t stood the test of time, but I really suspect it was never intended to. It was a quick fix which, due to the circumstances, was never fixed.
We continue our rather slow journey to Yalta, pausing from the conveyor belt of traffic to enter one of the many cafes/restaurants that line the road. The minimalist style has clearly not arrived in these parts, here maximalism is king. The restaurant we had chosen was packed with life-size plastic goblins, animals, and wooden structures everywhere. I guess the term kitsch hasn’t made it here yet either.
Well we finally got to Yalta, 2 hours to cover 85 kms and it was full. We found a place to park the car $10 for 4 hours a lot of money here and went in search of a beach. As with much of Crimea, large sections of the beach are closed or inaccessible, but we finally found one. How to describe it? Lots of construction, very crowded beaches, well sadly I didn’t like Yalta, nor its coastline, but that being said, it is probably the most westernized city in Crimea and for anyone on a first trip to Crimea a good starting point.
After 4 hours we left Yalta in a westerly direction. There is a good road connecting Yalta with Sevastopol, but it is high up in the hills, so we braved a smaller road and headed towards the sea. We found some very interesting small towns, many decadently literate, but inhabited by grand houses from an earlier age, most of a similar grand Italianate style, clearly once very beautiful and imposing, but sadly access to the sea or beach was restricted . , impossible, or simply too ugly to consider.
We eventually found ourselves back on the main road and stopped at another very fancy, over designed (imagine a Christmas tree with so much tinsel and decoration you can’t see the tree and get the picture) but good quality roadside eatery, we had a small stop for a coffee and they told us there was a beach about 8 klms further west and that’s where we headed to catch the last sun of the day.
We came across a road sign indicating the town we were looking for and headed back down towards the sea. We meandered through a small but undistinguished town and the road ended in a parking lot, we paid our $1 and headed through a myriad of buildings looking for the access to the beach, the sea, which we found. What we found was a pretty little pebble cove and we took what was going to be a very nice swim in a clean and fairly warm sea. This area had clearly had some industrial or military value at some point in its history, now nature and the sea were hard at work returning what was left to its component parts, I wish speed to the nature gods.
We returned to our rental car and headed towards Sebastopol, but halfway there we came across a very spectacular and attractive cove far below us, so we turned off the main road at the first turnoff we could find. We offered a ride to 2 hitchhikers (not a common site) from kyiv. They told us they enjoyed this area as it was largely untouched. They rewarded our generosity by telling us about a beautiful beach nearby and giving us directions,
We went down and down towards the sea the small road which turned into a lane, then a mud track and finally a good way to wreck a car. The beach was enticingly close and we could see the beach and yes it looked beautiful but…they forgot to tell us it was inside Russian territory! By a quirk of history, there are several Russian-owned enclaves inside the Crimea and we had strayed into one.
The Russian sailors patrolling the area were friendly enough, although I felt they were wondering what a European was doing in such a remote place and didn’t invite us in, well actually they showed us the easiest way to leave.
We retraced our steps, finally finding our paved path and starting to climb towards the main road. Much of Crimea is mountainous, with the largest mountains hugging the southwest coast. Reaching the main road we headed back to Sevastopol and as we had become addicted to the beach, this day we decided to complete our day with a moonlit swim in Sevastopol.
