On Sunday morning, first stop was Three Fishes Restaurant in Sevastopol. Just like Saturday’s restaurant, there wasn’t a breakfast menu or even a lunch menu. Everything was geared towards a three course dinner. What we both felt like for breakfast was some of that excellent Turkish coffee we’d had the morning before, plus eggs and toast. The cook refused to make toast – I think Eugene told them we wanted French toast – so we had fried eggs and bread instead, along with the coffee and some respectable orange juice. The restaurant had a great bathroom. It was not only clean, with a modern toilet, soap and paper towels, it was interesting, which stone walls and ceramic floors.
After breakfast, Eugene wanted us to see the panorama of the Crimean War. This was the first panorama ever made – ie – invented here. Asolutely amazing detail, with clay models that looked life-like – posed as soldiers and officers during various famous parts of the battles. Also shown was the first sister of mercy, giving water to soldiers, and Pigorov, the first doctor to use nurses. It was fascinating to see that the battle mounds were dug shallowly into the groud, then built up with basket-like wooden structures. Over top of this was dirt and sandbags. In the side were doors. The soldiers slept inside and fought on top. The soldiers were wearing heavy winter clothing despite them fighting in sweltering summer weather.
Here is one of Eugene’s jokes:
Socialisism, Communism and Capitalism were going to have a meeting, but Socialism was late. The other two asked him why he was late. He said he’d been in a line-up waiting for kobassa. Capitalisim asked, “What is lineup?” Communist asked, “What is kobassa?”
another joke:
It is not up to the host to count the amount of food his guests eat. That’s the job of his wife.
Another Eugenism, while crossing a busy street: “We’re in the right. “We may be killed, but we’re in the right.”
After that, we drove to a WWII memorial for dead Soviet soldiers. It was a long treed walk and there were also displays of naval artifacts.
When we walked around the other side of the monument, we could see where the charge of the light brigade occurred.
The we drove to Balaclava. This was a secret naval base during Soviet times and the city was closed to the public and never mentioned in newspapers etc. It has a huge S shaped harbour that fish love and it had been a fishing town before becoming the military experimental centre. Lots of utilitarian and sturdy but not very pretty buildings and walls.
We then drove to the other side and walked up to see some of the Genovese Fortress.
After that, we drove to Eskir Kamin, which was quite a distance, first on regular roads, but then on dirt packed roads with no markings. This was definitely not a tourist place. While we were still on the paved road, Eugene stopped at a fruit stand and we bought muscat grapes, pears and black raspberries. Delicious!
The Eskir Kamin cave towns were WAY high up and quite a walk. It took about 45 minutes to get up but boy was it worth it. A whole city had been up there in ancient times, complete with toll roads, a church, houses with several rooms, all within the caves.
The stone itself was formed from these interesting small white snails that crawl up grasses. Century upon century of dead snail shells formed the rocks.
Here’s what the snails look like:
Getting down the mountain was a bit more treacherous than climbing up and we felt like we’d had a really good workout by the time we got down.
There was a small restaurant at the base of Eskir Kamin (only restaurant). Lots of black pigs running around, and on the menu was black pig cooked various ways. We ate black pig and one of them bit Natalia. She has a nice round bruise on her thigh. We had the pork two ways – pounded and breaded and served over mashed potatoes, and also in blinis. I had a Crimean beer.
