February 10, 2013

It is not going to be easy to condense the details of our wonderful trip to the Crimea and the 454 pictures that I took into one blog. Don’t worry, I will not publish even a tenth of the pictures that I took but enough to introduce you to a beautiful part of Ukraine that we just experienced this past week.

 

Monday evening we flew to Simferopol and then drove down to Sevastopol where we stayed at the Admiral Hotel. Our tour guide, Yuri, met us at 9:00 AM and we began our whirlwind tour of the Crimea. In so many ways I felt like we were in a different country than Ukraine.

Tuesday morning our tour began with a city tour of Sevastopol. It is a very quaint city of 350,000 which seemed a lot more like about 50,000 population. It was built in 1783, and its name means “famous, grand, worthy of respect”. A port city and the main base of the Black Sea Fleet all but fourteen of its buildings were destroyed in the Crimean War of 1854.  It was rebuilt and then once again destroyed during World War II (The Great Patriotic War). More bombs were dropped on Sevastopol by the Germans than on France, Italy, and Russia all put together. It was once again completely rebuilt and is basically a Soviet City.  Russia is revered in this city and it is the retirement home to many Russian military personnel.

Sevastopol - Harbor Town

Our tour guide Yuri

Our group

In front of the hotel

After visiting the monuments  on Pavel Nakhimov Square (central square) we took a boat ride around the main bay where we were able to see several new and old ships, new and old Russian Submarines, and a view of the massive granaries that are on the bay.

Boat ride through harbor

Battleship

Russian Submarine

Then we walked down to the Seafront Boulevard.  Passing under the Dragon Bridge which was donated by China we had a beautiful view of the harbor entrance and the Monument to the Scuttled Ships. At the top of the monument is an eagle with the key to the city in its claws, representing the truth that the key to saving Sevastopol is to save the Bay…..  Lose the bay and you lose Sevastopol.. …. Therefore two rows of ships were scuttled at the mouth of the bay thereby blocking it and securing its safety.

Dragon Bridge

Key to the City Monument

Next we went to Malakhov Hill which was the main defense position of the Russian Army during the Crimean War and the setting of what is depicted at the Panorama Museum which was next on our tour.

Malakhov Mound

Monument on Malakhov Mound

The museum is an incredible labor of love and honor to those who fought in the war.   It originally took one painter three years to paint.  After 40% of it was destroyed during World War II, it took nineteen painters three years to restore.    By the way, the Crimean War was a war between Russia and the allied countries of France, England and Turkey in order to redistribute the spheres of influence in Europe and the Middle East.  Twenty-four thousand Russian Troops held off 43,000 Allied Troops.  The saying “A war of lions fought by donkeys” came from the battle that showed a total lack of strategy on the British part and is remembered as the Charge of the Light Brigade. (Tennyson)  The story of the battle reminded me of something right out of the Book of Alma in the Book of Mormon.    

   

Panorama Museum of Crimean War

After stopping by the Memorial to the defenders of the City during World War II, we went to Chersonese.

Chersonese

Chersonese

Chersonese (peninsula) was established in 5^th century BC and grew to become one of the largest economic and cultural centers in the entire Northern Black Sea Coast area.  It was inhabited by the Greeks.  It was well known by the Russians, Byzantines and the Turks, but was destroyed by Tatar tribes in 1299.  It was rediscovered in 1827 by archaeologists.  It has spiritual significance in that traditionally it is thought that the apostle Andrew visited here.  There is a statue of St. Andrew near the church that was built over the baptismal site of Prince Vladimir.

Chersonese - Medieval Ruins

Cathedral over the place where Vladimir was baptized

St. Andrew Monument

Chersonese

Chersonese Museum - Tree of Life

Wednesday – After a delicious breakfast of rice pudding we left for Yalta.  It was a beautiful drive along the seacoast which reminded us of the drive along Highway 1 in California down to Carmel.  Along the way we stopped to see the Resurrection Church at Foros built in 1833 and restored during the Gorbachev era and is very near his summer home on the coast.

 

Resurrection Church

Our next stop was in Alupka where we visited the Vorontsov Palace. This Palace is billed as the place where Churchill stayed during the Yalta Conference but has much greater significance. It is a Palace built by Mikhail Vorontsov, a governor and outstanding political figure in Russian History. The palace was designed by English architect Blore taking twenty years to build (1828-1848) and is said to be “a combination of architectural genius and landscape genius, sea with mountains, stones with forest, and wilderness of nature with elegance of civilization.” And it was definitely all that and more. The view of the ocean was magnificent. The gardens were so beautiful and one can only imagine how much more beautiful they are in the spring and summer when the flowers are in bloom. It was so nice to be the only ones there so we could take our time to enjoy the rooms from floor to ceiling………… a delight to behold.

Vorontsov Palace or Alupka Palace

Vorontsov Palace

Vorontsov Palace

Patio Overlooking the Sea

Sleeping Lion that Churchill offered to buy

Dining Room - Vorontsov Palace

Vorontsov Palace

Our lunch stop was at a beautiful little restaurant, Elena’s, where we had a view overlooking the ocean and the famous Swallow’s Nest Castle.

Swallow's Nest

Then on to the Renaissance Italian Lavadia Palace. To some people this is remembered as the place where the Yalta Conference of 1945 was held. This conference was chaired by F. D. Roosevelt with Churchill and Stalin and was the conference that divided up Europe post World War II.

The romantic of us would remember it as the summer palace of Nicholas and Alexandria.   It was much larger than the other palaces we visited but yet very small by Russian Palace standards. We walked through the historical rooms of the Yalta Conference and also the rooms of the residence of the Russian Tsar and his family. It is a beautiful white palace overlooking the blue sea and green gardens with palm trees.

 

Lavadia Palace

Room where Yalta Conference was held

Round Table of Yalta Conference

School Room in Lavadia Palace

View from upper floor of Lavadia Palace

Tsar's Office of Lavadia Palace

View out of Alexandria's Study

Driving to downtown we parked and walked along the Embankment – Yalta’s main street.  What a beautiful place to have a main street; right along the seacoast with many people enjoying the spring sunshine. I say spring because that is what it felt like…..64 degrees.

View from embankment at Yalta

Yalta

Our last visit of the day was the Chekhov Museum and residence. Chekhov is one of the many famous writers in Russia. He has written many short stories, books and plays. His residence has been preserved by several artists from England and the Ministry of Culture.  He died at age 44 and besides being an author he was a surgeon. 

Chekhov's home

Room in Chekhov's home

Thursday we traveled to Balaklava to visit the famous Russian Submarine Base where it is possible to house over 20 nuclear submarines at a time…..famous to most Americans because it is in the James Bond movie “From Russia with Love”. This base is now a cold war museum. Interesting story………This is an incredible edifice under a stone mountain. I can’t even begin to explain the complexities of this top secret base which took ten years to build. When the Russian subs needed to be repaired they would secretly enter the base from the bay side, float back into the bowels of the earth and after securing the one foot thick concrete doors they would drain the channel and repair the sub. After the repairs they would float it out the long channel into the sea. The interesting part of the story is that when the water was drained out to do the repairs there would be thousands of fish that the workmen would remove from the channel and then in the evening they would smoke the fish for food. They had a little vent running out the side of the mountain for the smoke.   When the townspeople would see the smoke they would say, “Looks like a submarine is being repaired.” Not so top secret after all.

Submarine Base Tunnel to sea

Outside of Submarine Base

Where subs go back to the sea

Officer's desk in sub base

On the way to Bakhchisaray we stopped at a little donkey/pig farm. The mountains above the pig farm are called the mysterious sphynx mountains and were very interesting. The Chinese pigs wallowing in the mud made me question my love of pork in Ukraine. While I was taking a picture of those cute little fat pigs a donkey came to call. I was caught between the dirty donkey and the pigs and mud or whatever on either side.

Bakhchisaray is a little town with narrow winding streets that is populated with Greeks, Turks and Russians. It is the home of the Kahn’s Palace. It was very different than the other palaces we visited. There are many buildings spread over a large area, including the Kahn’s Palace, and a house for each of his four wives and their harems.

There are many fountains on the property one of which is called the Fountain of Tears and has a poem written about it by the famous poet Pushkin. As the story goes, the Khan married a beautiful young (15 yrs.) girl and she was his favorite wife. All of the other wives rejected her and she died from a broken heart. However most believe that she was 

drowned in the fountain by the other wives, thus the name, Fountain of Tears.

Inside Wife's House - Kahn's Palace

Fountain of Tears

Khan's Palace

Khan's Palace

Khan's Palace

We also went up into the hills of this city to the Assumption Monastery that was founded in 800 AD. This particular cave town is inhabited by monks who are very productive and maintain the cave city and church. The church that is built in the side of the cliff is very unusual but beautiful. These dwellings reminded us of the caves in Mesa Verde Colorado. 

    

Assumption Monastery Church

Assumption Monastery Church

Cave Monastery

Cave Monastery

Well, that is about the end of the trip. We got up very early Friday morning and with fond memories of our trip headed back to Kyiv. Knowing that there is opposition in all things we were not surprised to be greeted by 32 degree weather and pouring rain which by Saturday turned to six more inches of snow. It is beautiful here and still winter but we had a wonderful three day reprieve.

At the airport

View from above

Thought for the Week:

"Declaring our testimony of the gospel is good, but being a living example of the restored gospel is better. Wishing to be more faithful to our covenants is good; actually being faithful to sacred covenants—including living a virtuous life, paying our tithes and offerings, keeping the Word of Wisdom, and serving those in need—is much better. Announcing that we will dedicate more time for family prayer, scripture study, and wholesome family activities is good; but actually doing all these things steadily will bring heavenly blessings to our lives."

—Dieter F. Uchtdorf

Kyiv Temple 2-10-2013