{"id":3233,"date":"2008-09-01T17:44:00","date_gmt":"2008-09-01T17:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress2\/yalta\/"},"modified":"2017-03-11T21:02:26","modified_gmt":"2017-03-11T21:02:26","slug":"yalta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/yalta\/","title":{"rendered":"Yalta"},"content":{"rendered":"

We drove to Yalta Sunday night, stopping on the way for various sights, including a cemetery for German WWII soldiers that was funded by Germans. The apartment we’re staying in here is amazing. Absolutely spotless and three bedrooms. And a working shower.<\/p>\n

On Monday morning, Eugene cooked us a breakfast of ham, eggs, bread, apple juice and coffee and then we walked along the boulevard of Yalta. It was the first day of school and so the kids were all dressed up in black and white outfits which is traditional. Some were in sparkly outfits and little boys were in suits. All were variations of the same thing. The girls wore giant white organza bows in their hair.<\/p>\n

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Driving in Yalta is quite something. Narrow streets and people having to back out as others go forward. We went to the Massandra Winery for a tasting and I bought a port from 1944 and also Tsar Nicholas’ favourite wine.<\/p>\n

From there we drove towards Koktobel, through the mountains \u2013 twisty turny and amazingly beautiful. We stopped for soup along the way. I had kvas soup which was interesting. Natalia thought it tasted like coca cola. We continued along the twisty road with breathtaking scenery.<\/p>\n

Before we got to Sudak, Eugene turned off towards a beach area and we parked in front of a restaurant owned by a friend of his who is a Tatar. We had Turkish coffee<\/p>\n

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and then went on the most amazing hike, which started along the beach \u2013 which is tarry coloured sand and lots of round smooth stones \u2013 and continued up the rocks. It was quite a climb but not as difficult as yesterday’s. We saw spectacular views.<\/p>\n

When we came down, we had more coffee and paklava \u2013 which was quite different than any I’ve had before. It was crispy and sweet but not cloyingly so.<\/p>\n

We continued on the winding road to Sudak and visited the Genovese fortress and walked up to the top.<\/p>\n

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It was interesting to see the scale of the fortress and to get a sense of what it would be like to live in it. We also found the first bank machine and I successfully withdrew hryvny.<\/p>\n

We continued our drive to Koktobel and checked in to the first hotel of our stay. It had a great bathroom and lots of hot water and there was even a blow dryer in our bedroom.<\/p>\n

We talked along the boulevard in Koktabel and it was like being in Port Dover. All sorts of souvenirs, Ukrainian tourists, music, kitchy things to do. We went to a quiet restaurant where jazz was playing and had a dinner that consisted mostly of meat but also a dessert that they called bisquick but tasted like trifle, and a bottle of Eugene’s favourite wine. The service was slow but the food was good when it finally came, albeit a bit heavy on the meat. The wine was nice too. The jazz musicians were quite entertaining and they even dedicated a song to us.<\/p>\n

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We drove to Yalta Sunday night, stopping on the way for various sights, including a cemetery for German WWII soldiers that was funded by Germans. The apartment we’re staying in here is amazing. Absolutely spotless and three bedrooms. And a working shower. On Monday morning, Eugene cooked us a breakfast of ham, eggs, bread, apple … Continue reading “Yalta”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[384,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ukraine-trip","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3233"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3233\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4799,"href":"https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3233\/revisions\/4799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}