Peace in Our Time

YALTA: Since arriving in Yalta I've also visited Chekov's summer dacha where he wrote, amongst other things, "The Cherry Orchard" and "Lady with a Lap Dog". Unfortunately his study was shut, his bedroom was closed off and the gardens weren't exactly in their best form. We also walked along the promenade watching the fisherman, trying on half price Rip Curl boardies and quaffing popcorn by the cupful. So this is how Russia's middle classes squander their gas money.

Yesterday we also did the aforementioned cable car trip as well as visiting Alupka Palace in the morning. We didn't actually enter the palace but we walked around the gardens. Then after our trip up the hill we dropped in on the fabled Swallow's Nest for cocktails and hot chocolates. This palace, or house, was built in the 1920's but enjoys an emblematic status for Crimea because of it's dramatic location perched, actually overhanging at some points, on a cliff forty metres above the ocean.

Today we dropped into Livaydia to recreate the Yalta Treaty where Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill set the tone for the latter half of the twentieth century. The palace was actually built as the summer residence of the Romanov's, and upstairs most of the exhibits are about Anastasia's famous family, however downstairs there is the actual table around which the treaty was signed, various rooms utilised by the famous troika and a number of candid pictures.