Simferopol, Trolley to Yalta.

I wake up at Simferopol. Well, now I’m in Crimea, so what’s next?
I find the “Onyx” spelunking club that manages the Chatyr-Dag caves. We agree for a visit to both caves on the next day.
Then I find a room in Hotel Ukraina. It’s twice as expensive as Odessa’s Passage, but it’s much more comfortable, and there is hot water!
I’m tired, so I am not walking today. I ride the longest trolleybus line in the world: 80 km from Simferopol to Alushta and Yalta. It’s a 2h30 drive accross the Crimean Mountains, with a pass at 750 m.







I hate Yalta, it’s packed with tourists. The only interesting thing I see is a building site, where a guy saws a stone with a basic saw, almost as easily as if it was wood.







The way Ukrainians use building stone is strange to me. They use these ugly, small meulière blocks to build noble buildings, and huge blocks of fine, brilliant-white limestone for second-range buildings.

I soon travel back to Simferopol, but not with the trolley. A microbus saves one hour.


Crimea is much more Russian than Ukrainian. Most people are native Russian speakers. 95 % of tourists are Russian (the rest being Belarussian, Ukrainian or Baltic). I see several bilingual signs where the Ukrainian version has been erased (it looks like the Deutch-French linguistic war in Belgium). In Simferopol, this road sign indicates Yevpatoria and Moscow, but not Kyiv (although it’s the same direction).