Trip to the Ukraine, day 4, Yalta -- Part 2

Here is the famous photo of the "Big Three." I will later add the photo of the "Three Wise Guys" taken in the same location. (My camera battery was flat, so the photos were taken on Kim's camera).

Trip to the Ukraine, day 4, Yalta

On September 21, we drove from our boat in Sevastopol across the Crimean Peninsula. On the way we stopped at Alupka Palace. During the month of February, 1945, the "Big Three," Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin met at the Livadia Palace near Yalta and made final decisions concerning World War II. Churchill stayed at Alupka and Roosevelt stayed at Livadia. Stalin, I think, stayed in a Dascha not far away, right on the Black Sea (maybe the same one where during the 1991 coup Gorbachev was placed under house arrest and replaced by Yeltsin).

The bottom photo is Alupka Palace and you see our group, minus me the photographer, going in (the two young people work for Wilf's company and are acting as our guides). The Palace is located on the side of a very high mountain and the next photo up shows the view of that. If your eyes are sharp, you can see a tram going up the mountain suspended from a cable. On the other side of the palace is the Black Sea. The photo above that shows the outside of the rooms where Churchill stayed during the conference. He choose this location, even though it is about 3 hours by winding roads from the conference location, in part because it looks like an English castle. The top photo shows the front of the Livadia Palace, built by the last Tzar, where the Big Three met, negotiated, and signed the agreement.

Trip to the Ukraine, day 3--Part 2

Here is something incredible! Germany, during WWII had a fleet of submarines in the Black Sea. To protect them from the eyes of the allies, they built this base. After the war, the Soviet Union took Crimea back and improved the base for their nuclear submarine fleet. The base was a very secret, and very cool, way of servicing those submarines. There is a bay off the Black Sea into which the submarines sailed. They then went right, left, and right again and then into a tunnel! They were serviced inside the tunnel and then moved through the tunnel and out a different way. I wonder if the U.S. knew about this?

The top photo shows the bay in the foreground and the Black Sea beyond. It is not apparent from this photo, but a ship sailing by on the Black Sea and looking in would only see a small bay. The middle photo is a diagram of the man-made tunnel. Note that they came in one side and out the other. We did not have time, but for about $4 we could have gone into the facility. The bottom photo is the actual tunnel. I think this is cool.

Trip to the Ukraine, day 3, Yalta

We left Odessa on the afternoon of September 19 for the Crimean Peninsula. This meant sailing all night on the Black Sea in our little riverboat. During the night we awoke during a serious (to me) storm causing the boat to rock, roll, shimmy and twist. During the Second World War, Crimea was in the hands of Russia and a major battle was fought there. Now there are memorials to the soldiers and sailors who fought the Germans. In about 1951, Stalin gave crimea back to the Ukraine and, with the Ukraine now an independent nation Russian no longer owns the peninsula. Pursuant to a treaty, the two nations each have a Black Sea fleet headquartered in Sevastopol. We saw both Russian and Ukrainian sailors there. The two nations are not friendly, but the locals say no problems exist between the sailors of the two nations. The treaty expires in a few years and will probably not be renewed requiring the Russians to leave.

The top photo shows our ship leaving Odessa; in the foreground are Carol and Meka (looking surprised at the jelly fish), and Kim and Wilf are in the background. The second one down shows German bullet holes in a very old Orthodox church. The third from the top shows a memorial located in Sevastopol honoring the Soviet soldiers and sailors who fought together; the memorial is a stylized bayonet and sail. The bottom photo, like the one above it, honors the two branches and shows a sailor and a soldier in warlike poses. (The man in the foreground, with his wife, is a retired U.S. nuclear submarine captain). Meka Voge and Romaine Romney are in the background. The Crimean peninsula remains a major naval area.

Trip to the Ukraine, days 1 and 2, Odessa

We went to the Ukraine with our friends Kim and Romaine Romney. Our hosts, Wilf and Meka Voge, were already there. We left the local airport on September 16, and landed in Odessa, Ukraine on September 17. We were met by our hosts at the airport and driven to the port; we stayed the entire time on a riverboat. Odessa is a newer city started by Katherine the Great. It reminds me of Washington, D.C. with its straight, broad streets. On the evening of September 18, we went to the Opera House there to see Swan Lake. The opera house is an exact duplicate of La Scala. For about $12 each, we got seats in a box. The top photo is the Opera House. The middle one is of the six of us in our life jackets during the mandatory safety drill; from left to right: Wilf Voge, me, Meka Voge, Carol, Romain and Kim Romney. The bottom photo is our sister ship.

And . . . She's Back

My daughter and her fiancee decided they wanted to drive from the wedding reception to the hotel on Friday in the 'Vette. So Ardell and I picked it up today from Lang's new shop. He was not able to finish everything on the long list of items to sort it out, but he did set up a second radiator fan with a shroud to, hopefully, keep the engine cooled.

The top photo shows Preston and Melanie about to leave in the reception in the car. The second one down shows them posing in the car and the third one shows me driving "my girlfriend" back home. The top three photos were taken by Sonya Pearson who, as you can see, is a very good photographer.

Here are two older photos of Evan and Seth taken on the Fourth of July during the parade.

Gone again!

We went on a vacation two weeks ago and I drove the car back to Lang's on the way. It needs a little work. Hope to get it back by mid-August.