Eclectic Trips

Crimea landscape

Crimea is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been to. It’s truly magnificent with it’s landscapes, mountains and beaches. When you drive through Crimea, every corner you turn opens up a view even more spectacular than the last, and the drive up and down Crimea’s winding roads is a real pleasure.

The first place I stayed at was called Utyos- or Santa Barbara. The beaches here are not the beautiful sandy luxury, but the water is crystal clear, and relatively cool on most days. Instead of the sand, you get either large pebbles, or just concrete platforms with lounge chairs for rent. The weather was perfect throughout my stay, and I grew to enjoyed the pebbles, and diving into the clear cool water from the concrete platforms. Above Santa Barbara there is a beautiful vast park,  with an old castle- an old residence of Princess Gagarin. There is some gorgeous scenery from the mountains, and really nice, lush vegetation all around the large park.

There are small fruit stands  everywhere that sell the freshest, sweetest, juiciest fruit that is locally grown. The figs alone are worth a visit to Crimea. Another local specialty that i really enjoyed was the “LIVE” beer- a microbrew that has no additives or preservatives, it’s the best beer I ever tasted. The promenade is lined with cafes and restaurants that have very extensive, if similar menus. I loved the food here. Lots of yummy seafood, fresh veggies, great salads. “Muscles a la Crimea”- local specialty, was my favorite-muscles taken out of the shell and sauteed with onions- yum! For all the deliciousness, the food is very inexpensive. About $5-7 for breakfast, $10 for lunch, and $15 and up dinner.  As was my (simple and a bit outdated, but very clean and comfy) hotel “The quiet harbor”- around $45 a night. With all of this affordable loveliness, I kept asking myself- Why aren’t there more international tourists here? And I am pretty sure it’s the language barrier. Virtually no one speaks English here, and since there is no international tourism, it doesn’t seem like the locals have any incentive to learn.

Crystal clear water in Utyos

fruit..and fish?

"Live" beer stand

Another really beautiful corner of Crimea is Balaklava. A town famous for it’s Nuclear Submarine base.

****The base was said to be virtually indestructible and designed to survive a direct atomic impact. During that period, Balaklava was one of the most secret residential areas in the Soviet Union. Almost the entire population of Balaklava at one time worked at the base; even family members could not visit the town of Balaklava without a good reason and proper identification. In 1996, the last Russian submarine left the base, which is now open to the public for guided tours around the canal system, the base, and a small museum, which is now housed in the old ammunition warehouse deep inside the hillside.****( Wikipedia)

And that’s all cool, and the museum is definitely worth a visit. But Balaklava also has a huge beautiful marina that houses some incredible yachts. There are some great restaurants here as well. And then, there is a small marina that has dingy little boats that you hire to take you to completely remote tiny beaches only accessible by a small boat. You take a enough food and water for the day, and get dropped off at one of these raw beauties, and the boat comes to pick you up at the end of the day. If you are lucky you will see dolphins playing and jumping on the way to these tiny treasures. This is by far the best experience ever.

Balaklava at night

With all the beauty of Crimea, it comes as a surprise to me that Yalta is considered the capital of Crimea, and thus is the place visitors want to visit most. Yalta is very crowded, pretty overpriced, the beaches are packed, and thus pretty dirty. As far as I noticed doesn’t offer anything that is any more special than any of the other small, quaint and lovely towns all around Crimea. But then again, I always prefer smaller places with character to large tourist destinations, so maybe I overlooked something special about Yalta. It is definitely worth a visit though if you are around. The walk on a long promenade along the sea is nice, with some small parks and green squares along the way. At the end of the promenade, there is lovely artisan market with artists and crafts people selling their art and trinkets- some really nice stuff here. And the restaurants along the promenade are decent-they just seemed so overpriced to me compared to everywhere else in Crimea.

"Zolotoye Runo" restaurant on the promenada in Yalta

Yalta promenade

Perhaps it’s worth learning some basic Russian, to be able to come and experience Crimea with all of it’s incredible undiscovered beauty.