Our last day in Odessa. Yesterday it rained all day so we did not do much. We leave at 9:45pm tonight for Singapore so we are just killing time downtown today. The picture is of the Potemkin Steps (192) linking the harbour to downtown Odessa. It was featured in the classic old movie "Battleship Potemkin" about the Russian Revolution.

A busy day in Odessa. Weather is a bit cooler, around 10 to 13 but not raining. Today was a busy day. We did a city tour, visited the catacombs and attended a ballet at the Odessa Opera House. Odessa is quite a beautiful city with much of the downtown preserved. It is a UNESCO designated heritage site. It did not suffer much damage in the war and many of the buildings are original from the 18th and 19th centuries. The city and area in laced with hundreds of catac...

Second day in Yalta. Main visit was to the Aloupka Palace, built by Prince (Count?) Michael Vorontsov, who was apparently richer than the Czar. The picture is of a ceiling in one of the rooms. Although it has the appearance of wood, it is actually papier mache and is original. While many other palaces were looted and badly damaged after the revolution, this one was protected and preserved as a museum. Today we left Yalta at noon and will cruise overnight to ...

Arrived in Yalta early this morning. Yalta is probably the most beautiful place we have visited on this trip. it was a playground for both the Russian Imperial Court under the czars and the communist leadership in the USSR. We visited the White Palace this morning that was a summer palace for Czar Nicholas II. It is probably best known as the site of the summit (Feb 4 - 11, 1945) where Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin met to divide up Europe after WWII. Yalta...

Photo is of the Michael Lomonosov - our ship - in the Sevatopol Harbour. A busy day. First we visited the Khan's Palace in Bahkchissaray, about an hour out of Sevastopol. The Tartar Khan ruled the Crimea during the Ottoman Empire in the 18th century. In the afternoon we visited the submarine tunnels in Balaklava where the USSR built a complex of tunnels under the mountain to protect submarines in the event of a nuclear attack. The complex stored and maintain...