Just spent an amazing week in Ukraine showing my hubby what this country is all about. We had so much fun...I dare say the delightful craziness of Ukraine may have overshawdowed our last European adventure in Paris! Paris, you are up...next I come visit me, you have a lot to live up to!
We met in Kyiv and spent the day wandering around a street famous for souvenir vendors and artisans. Jeff was impressed my how uniquie most of the stalls were..not your average souvenir lane where every stall has the exact same stuff. You can really tell there that many people make their wares and come to sell them rather than all ordering from the same Oriental trading company.
Jeff got to take his first train ride that night as we headed to Artemovsk, my neck of the woods. Jeff zonked out early (thank you jet lag) and I had a chance to get to know our compartment-mates, two American women that we met up with who were coming to Artemovsk with us to visit the orphanage and children's rehab center that opened while I was here.
We all spent monday walking around Artemovsk getting to meet all the local folks that I have been working with on a daily basis. It was really neat to have Jeff there so he could see what I had been doing with all my time.
On tuesday we boarded a train taking us down to the Crimean Peninsula, where we spent the rest of our vacation. We stayed in Sevestopol mostly (this is the southern harbor town where the Russian Black Sea Fleet is stationed). The scenery was quite a departure from what I have gotten used to in the northern part of the country. It wasn't quite warm enough to swim there but there was plenty of sunshine as we saw the sights. We mostly look day trips to nearby towns. First we went to the town of Bakchesaray where the Crimean Tatar culture is still thriving. We saw Khan's Palace which reminded me very much of what I saw in Istanbul (harem, palace complex, lush gardens, mosque on the premises). We got to try some excellent Crimean Tatar food which had a lot of caraway spice to it and reminded me of a mix between Turkish and India. Everything we ate there was amazing and delicious. Next we climbed up a giant hill to see a tiny little orthodox monastery that is cut right into the side of a cliff and then climbed up to the very top to explore an old mountain city that was cut and crafted among the natural rock formations. Jeff and I had a great time hopping around there and marveling at windows and skylights and even shelves that were cut out of the stone. I found my inner mountain goat and my husband learned something he didn't know about me...I am surprisingly agile and quick on steep rocky cliffs :)
The following day we had enough time to go on a half day trip to a town right on the southern coast called Balaklava. It was much warmer here and many people were actually swimming in the bveatiful little bay that the town was situated around. The clarity and color of the water were astounding and Jeff and I couldn't get over the fact that it didn't even smell like water we had ever been around...no stale fishy smell or even the faint scent of fuel from the boats. In fact, to me it smelled like watermelon! In this tiny bay we got to explore and old Russian submarine base which was used just 25 years ago to house the nuclear warheads that were (at that time) possibly going to be used on the US. Jeff was just tickled to be allowed inside the place (we were allowed to wander around by ourselves, without a guide and we kept commenting to each other about the curious freedom....we got to see the room where the radioactive material had been kept for goodness sakes!!). I learned a lot from Jeff who has always been a sucker for war history.
It was a bit difficult to get around down there, even with my improved Russian language skills, but we made it to most of the places we intended to visit and all in all we had a blast every minute we were together. We plan to come back sometime in the future and actually check out the awesome swimming conditions that we heard so much about!