Eugene and Olga and met me at the airport and we drove to Sevastopol and enjoyed an excellent meal of traditional Ukrainian food at Olga's apartment (the Borsch was delicious). Next stop was the Chersones museum site near Sevastopol, and although the accommodation was basic the location was superb, being on the site of an ancient Greek city and very close to the Black sea shore. The first night we drank Crimean wine by the sea as the sun went down. This was one of the first lessons I learned from Eugene - that Russians never drink without a reason and toasts are always required :-)
The reason to stay at Chersones was influenced by the fact that I had obtained a Business Visa to stay there. Many archeologists do visit the site in the summer months, but fortunately I was not required to join them in their digging! Eugene also arranged for registration of my Visa at a local hotel which proved very easy.
Sevastopol is a very beautiful city and Olga showed me around her city on the next day. Over the next few days Eugene arranged several very interesting trips to Balaclava bay and Foros church, the tartar capital at Bachisaray. We also had an enjoyable "shashlik" or barbeque day down at the beach with spectacular views along the coast. I prepared my own Indian style kebabs to accompany the Ukrainian style shashlik. Swimming in the Black sea for the first time was most pleasant. For several nights we enjoyed wonderful hospitality at Eugene's house in Simferopol and sampled the cuisine of his wife Vera. One night Eugene taught me how to drink Crimean brandy and also another Russian tradition - not to leave too long a gap between the first and second toasts (and between the second and third, and so on...). A good night enjoyed by all!!!
   There were many other highlights including visiting a cave town high on a limestone plateau. It was remarkable how much work must have been done to carve out these houses in the rock. There are also many cave systems that
have been carved out of the rock by the passage of water. I was very interested to visit one of these - it was much older than the type of caverns we have in England. I also managed to climb my first mountain Chatir-Dag, but only due to the fact that Eugene went off-road in his Red Ziguli (I wonder if "Ziguli" is a Russian type of tank - if not it should be!) to drive us across the plateau so that we only had the final 300m summit ascent to scale.
In the final days of my trip Eugene took us over to Feodosia on the East coast where we called to see one of Olga's closest friends and had a most pleasant meeting. From there we made our way to the beautiful coastal town of Novy Svet we here westayed for a couple of nights and used it as a base for seeing some of the area. The volcanic scenery around Kara Dag was especially dramatic with very unusual rock formations. The coastal fort of Sudak is in a very dominant location and is well worth a visit - if you want to try your Rasputin impersonation you can hire a black monk's outfit and have your photo taken. Eugene also took us along a coastal path to a place called "Paradise" with superb coastal scenery, followed by a swim in the Black sea. On the drive back along the coast we stopped to swim at one of the many beautiful beaches - a touch of sunburn acquired here too !! We passed many places on the way back to Sevastopol but we did not have enough time to see them all. I remember on our brief visit to Yalta seeing signs in English as well as Russian which was unusual. Of all the places I saw this was the most like a "Western" sea side resort, although still very stylish compared with places like Blackpool!
My two weeks was very busy and went very quickly and there are still many things to see and do. As with the Russian tradition for toasts I will make my own rule to state that the time between first and second visits to Crimea should not be too long. I am planning to return in September, and I strongly recommend the Crimea as a fascinating place to visit, with Eugene as a wonderful guide with special local knowledge. Not only is the scenery superb, but the people are very friendly also and the food (including fresh fruit) is very tasty.

Tim Shaw
Cumbria
England

June-2000