July 2, 2010

July 2, 2010

Today we headed for fun in the sun and a little vacation time after some pretty intense days visiting the kids’ birth home and orphanages. We flew out of Kiev on a regional jet similar to the ones you fly from Durango to Denver, only this one is with the Ukrainian Airlines Aerosvit and it will take us to Simperopol, which is the capital of Crimea. Crimea is actually an independent republic of Ukraine and the flight here only took one hour.

We have a new translator and driver here and we learned from them that Crimea was under Russian rule for 350 years prior to 1954. In that year Russian and Ukrainian leaders were having a party celebrating Ukraine and Khrushchev, who was very drunk at the time, proclaimed, “I must give Ukraine a gift. I will give them Crimea!” Crimea then became a part of Ukraine which clearly some people like and some people don’t. There is still much Russian influence here and this peninsula (which is really like an island because it is connected by a small piece of land to Ukraine) has been ruled in the past centuries by many empires including the Cossacks and Genghis Khan. There are 111 different ethnic groups who live in this region and many of them came here looking for rest as the unique climate and mineral waters are known to bring healing. This is why the Russian Czars made this their summer home as many of them had TB. The region is lush with lots of fields of lavender that give the countryside a sweet fragrance.

Our first stop of the day was the Cliff Monastery and Bakhchysaray Palace. The monastery (pictured above and with Vika to the right) is literally built into a cliff and sections of it are more than 1000 years old. It is Russian Orthodox and at one point more than 1000 monks lived in the caves and walls of the hills. Many healings have happened here and there is an icon of the Virgin Mary and Baby Jesus which is almost 1000 years old and is believed to bring blessings on your household.

Just down the road from the Monastery is the Palace which was built by the Khan families and the added onto by the Czarina Catherine who became a Christian when she came to rule Russia. It is fascinating to see an Orthodox Christian Monastery and then a Palace with mostly Muslim roots (see below picture in panarama) literally right next to each other. We got a wonderful tour of both places and learned much about the history of this area. The palace and monastery are built into a valley that is literally hidden until you drop into it, thus making it very strategic for whoever ruled this region.

We left the palace and headed for the coastal region of Crimea and the town of Yalta. After arriving in Yalta we could see why it is called, “The Russian Riviera.” The mountains are 1800 meters high and drop down drastically all the way to the Black Sea.

Our day ended as we arrived in Yalta for the evening. The hotel in which we are staying is the Bristol which was originally the home for Czar Nicholas and his family before their palace was built, a palace we will see on our trip on Monday. Our hotel is on Roosevelt Way, named after FDR who was here as part of the conference at Yalta which ended the European end of WWII. We also are just a few blocks from the Black Sea and so we went to watch the sunset and the kids played in the water (see them at right).

The great news is that from the balcony of our hotel we can see…the Golden Arches! (See picture at right.) There is a McDonald’s on the Lenin promenade just across from Lenin’s statue which is hysterically ironic. There is so much commercial and capitalistic adventure in the promenade that if Lenin could see it he would be rolling over in his grave! Our night ended with a late night snack from Mickey D’s before heading to bed. We changed our schedule a bit so that tomorrow we can just relax and we are looking forward to playing in Yalta on the beach after the last four emotion filled days