Unforgettable trip to Ai-Petri mountain on Day 3 in Crimea 2014

Travel to Crimea

Crimean trip day 3 🙂 We were very lucky with the weather that day. Sometimes it is not possible to see anything because of  thick clouds. Also we were advised to bring warm cloths with us which we didn’t need as it was warm and not windy at all.

We took a cable car to go on the very top of the famousAi-Petri – Crimean mountains

On the top of Ai-Petri we found many interesting things and amazing views!

Many people who visited this place left their “Thank you” on paper notes for restaurant to display where guests came from.

Crimean Tatars offering a horse ride to all tourists.

Here you have to make a wish and it WILL COME TRUTH!

And we went down to Yalta by road 🙂

If you wonder what else you could on Ai-Petri have look below 🙂

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Livadia Palace (part 2) – Royal Family and outdoor Gym

Travel to Crimea

It was another beautiful day in Crimea when we arrived to Lavadia Palace located near Yalta. The palace is a little over 100 years old and was built  as a Summer residence for the last Russian Tsar, Nicholas II, and his family.

In 1909 Nicholas and his wife, Aleksandra, traveled to Italy, where they were captivated by Renaissance palaces shown to them by Victor Emmanuel III. Upon their return, they engaged Nikolay Krasnov, Yalta’s most fashionable architect, responsible for the grand ducal residences in Koreiz, to prepare plans for a brand new imperial palace.  After 17 months of construction, the new palace was inaugurated on 11 September 1911. In November Grand Duchess Olga celebrated her 16th birthday at Livadia.

Romanovs loved the place and spent in Livadia palace at least 2,5 months every year.

Grand Duchesses Olga and Tatiana

Alexei and I went to two exhibitions there. The first was…

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Livadia Palace (part 1) – summer residence the last Emperor of Russia

Travel to Crimea

When we arrived to Livadia near Yalta, we went straight to Romanovs museum in the palace. This post is dedicated to the Russian Royal family murdered in 1918 in Siberian city Ekaterinburg. 

Born 6 May 1868, Nicholas was the oldest son of Tsar Alexander III and his wife Maria Feodorovna. His parents took particular trouble over his education. Nicholas was taught by outstanding Russian academics at home, he knew several languages and had a wide knowledge of history, and he also quickly grasped military science. His father personally guided his education, which was strictly based on religion. Nicholas ascended the throne at age 26 after the unexpected death of his father in 1894.

Nicholas II was the last Emperor of Russia, Grand Duke of Finland, and titular King of Poland. His official short title was Nicholas II, Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias.

Shortly after the death of his…

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Another day in Crimea 2014 – Vorontsov Palace and W. Churchill

Travel to Crimea

Another day in Crimea. We took a bus from Yalta and in 40 min arrived to the beautiful Vorontsov Palace and it’s munificent park. The palace was built for Count Michael Vorontsov in 1846 and it took 23 years to build.  The Palace is very interesting from an architectural design perspective and it’s history.

Interesting fact -the eminent architect who designed the Palace was Edward Blore, the same architect who designed parts of Buckingham Palace, St. James Palace and many other important buildings in England and Scotland.  Edward Blore designed the Voronsov Palace (another name is Alupka palace) without ever visiting the site in Russia. Another interesting fact -Winston Churchill and the British delegation stayed at the Vorontsov (Alupka) Palace during the Yalta Conference in 1945.  He gave a farewell dinner here.

Its northern facade is a very grand late English Gothic style. This is contrasted by Moroccan architecture on…

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Prolonged Wine tasting session or Massandra Palace Day 5 in Crimea

Travel to Crimea

Day 5 of our trip to Crimea was even better than others as we decided to go to Massandra Palace and taste famous Crimean wine 🙂

We took a bus from Yalta which goes up to the mountain. It’s last stop is Massandra Palace.

We spotted a statue of an eagle before the turn on the road to the Massandra palace.

It is a symbol of the Russian royalty.

Some attractions for taking pictures.

In the late 1870s the house of Count Vorontsov was badly damaged by the storm and he ordered to build a more comfortable building designed by French architect Etienne Bouchard. Vorontsov wanted Massandra Palace as a small palace for family vacation in the hottest time of year. All should contribute to an atmosphere of coziness and comfort. These requirements are fully matched the project of Etienne Bouchard made in the romantic style.

The Emperor of the…

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Crimea travel blog – Summer 2014

Traveling to Crimea July 2014 was unforgettable!  As soon as we’ve arrived home after this trip we wanted to go back to Crimea straight away 🙂 

This is what we’ve been doing in Crimea 🙂

• London – Crimea trip July 2014 (part 1)
• London – Crimea trip July 2014 (part 2)
• How we spent first few days in Yalta, Crimea, July 2014
• Unforgettable trip to Ai-Petri mountain on Day 3 in Crimea 2014
• Travel to Crimea Day 4 our Summer holiday 2014
• Prolonged Wine tasting session or Massandra Palace Day 5 in Crimea
• Another day in Crimea 2014 – Vorontsov Palace and W. Churchill
• Livadia Palace (part 1) – summer residence the last Emperor of Russia
• Livadia Palace (part 2) – Royal Family and outdoor Gym
• Best of the World – Shallow Nest castle – Crimea
• Russian Navy Day celebration in Sevastopol 2014
•  Stalin’s secret nuclear submarine base in Balaklava
•  Secrets of the Balaklava bay, Crimea
• The hidden treasures of ancient Chersonesus

“Lake of Youth ” Crimean legend

Watercourse under the Ai-Petri mountain in Crimea is another great tourist attraction! 

The legend tells: between Alupka and Mishor on the mountain river Hasta-bash in ancient times lived an elderly couple. They were plagued by one thought; where to get money to arrange a decent burial?The old man decided to go to the mountains several times, to collect dead wood in the forest, to sell it at the market and buy everything he needed for the funeral.

The next day the old man went into the mountains. Chopped up a large bundle of firewood and put it on his back, grunting and stumbling the old man went down a hill.
And he came to one of the sources that gave rise to the river Hasta-bash. The old man took a break and throwing wood on the ground, began to drink greedily.Then the old man fell asleep, leaning back against a pine tree.Meanwhile, the old woman, without waiting for the old man decided to go to the forest to search for him.

When she saw a man carrying a bundle of wood, she did not recognise him as her husband and asked him:

– Young man, did you meet my old man in the woods?

– Why, – said her husband – are you blind from old age, can you not recognise me?

– Do not laugh at me, young man – the women said

And then the old man realised that he drank water from the fountain of youth, which his grandfather told him about.He then explained everything to his wife. The old woman of course, immediately wanted to drink some water too.Her husband explained to her how to find the source, and went home.

Busy with his work, he did not notice that it was night already. Then he ran down the mountain to look for the old woman. But he couldn’t find his wife anywhere. Suddenly he heard a child crying in the bushes. Picking up the child, he speechlessly  surprised that a child wrapped in the rags of the old woman …

It was found that the women with the usual greed for young  drank too much water from the miraculous source under the mountain Ai-Petri.

Nowadays people go there to try to regain their youthfulness.

 

 

“War and Peace” Festival in Sevastopol June 2014

Arts festivals

The V Art Festival “War and Peace” dedicated to the 70-th anniversary of the liberation of the city Sevastopol from German Nazi  is taking place 08 June, 2014 — 17 June, 2014 in the Hero-city in #Crimea.

 

 

“War and Peace” Festival is conducted in Sevastopol and represents a massive combination of various art forms: photography, theatrical plays, performances, military music and dancing. The Festival was named after one of the greatest Russian writers Leo Tolstoy who visited Sevastopol during Crimean War in 1854 and published records of his experiences during the Siege of Sevastopol (1854 – 1855). “Sevastopol Stories”are three short stories written by Leo Tolstoy in 1854. These brief “sketches” formed the basis of many of the episodes in Tolstoy’s magnum opus, War and Peace.

Leo Tolstoy in Sevastopol 1854.

Leo Tolstoy was 26 years old when he first saw the ramparts of Sevastopol. The weather in Crimea in the early winter of 1854—subtropical, cool but not cold—was a paradise compared with the harsh snow and ice farther north. The city itself, though, was in chaos. The heights above the port were ringed with earthworks of woven saplings and packed dirt and stone. Below, the narrow entrance to the harbor was blocked by the hulls of wooden ships deliberately sunk by the Russian navy, placed there to block the invaders. “There are thousands of different objects,” Tolstoy wrote, “thrown in heaps here and there; soldiers of different regiments, some provided with guns and with bags, others with neither guns nor bags, crowd together; they smoke, they quarrel.”

Sevastopol International “War and Peace” Festival first took place in 2010. In 2011 it combined different genres: cinematography, military music, modern dancing and photography, media-arts and performance. But the main character of the event is still the same – Hero City of Sevastopol. The most spectacular arts are joined within area of Sevastopol and “War and Peace”

All the events of the Festival are united by a general topic – “War and Peace. Development dimension”. International “War and Peace” festival combined most various creative projects and restored the greatest international art festival in Crimea.

Crimea to See Tourist Boom!

After its reunification with Russia, the breakaway region of Crimea is bracing for an influx of Russian tourists who have hastily changed their vacation plans to pass the summer on the peninsula’s sprawling Black Sea beaches, a senior Crimean official said Thursday, May the 15th.

“We welcome the people from other Russian regions who have decided to support the Republic in this crucial moment,” Crimean Deputy Prime Minister Rustam Temirgaliyev said in an interview with RIA Novosti.

“We’ve registered a hike in passenger turnover at the Simferopol airport,” he said, adding Crimean sanatoriums were in for an extraordinarily busy summer.

“We can confirm that all our sanatoriums and resort facilities, including 176 major ones, will be full-to-bursting over summertime, from June 1 to approximately September 15,” the minister stressed.

He said the Crimean authorities were negotiating additional traffic routes, with Russia’s Novorossiysk and Anapa ports to run ferry services to Crimea.

Wow! We are the lucky ones! Booked all our flights and going to take ferry from Anapa port to Yalta in July 2014!

 

Medical rehabilitation in Crimea

Travel to Crimea

Are there opportunities for the Crimean sanatoria in the medical tourism market? 

In a recent article by Ian Youngman, “The potential of potential powerhouse economies in medical tourism” the author states: “Russia and the CIS countries offer the biggest long-term market for medical tourism, but while they want a reasonable price, they also demand top quality care and service”.

Crimea is only a small area of the vast and transcontinental territory of Russian and the CIS which stretches from Japan to Germany. It is an area where people from the USSR traditionally had access to the warm sea and the moderate microclimate of Yalta, like no other on the Black Sea. The curative mud and brine treatments from the Lakes of Crimea are claimed to be effective in medical rehabilitation.

Crimea was discovered by the Romanov dynasty. It was the Russian Czars who built the first train line to a…

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