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Istanbul, Crimea/Dneiper Black Sea Cruise, Kiev and Moscow - a trip report in pictures

Istanbul, Crimea/Dneiper Black Sea Cruise, Kiev and Moscow - a trip report in pictures

Old Jun 30th, 2013, 11:04 AM
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Istanbul, Crimea/Dneiper Black Sea Cruise, Kiev and Moscow - a trip report in pictures

We made this 21 day trip starting in late May. We had been to Istanbul on three previous trips and enjoy it, but everything else was totally new to us. We found It interesting but frankly not as beautiful as the pictures my DH took during it. He is a master at filtering out the crumbling stuff that sometimes surrounds the basic beauty that exists in so many places. The economic conditions in the Ukraine challenged his skill but he rose to the occasion. Rather than spend a lot of time typing a long trip report, I'll let his pictures (with my captions and a few of my own pix) tell the story.

If the links aren't clickable, please just copy and paste them into your browser.

This first album is of Istanbul. We flew there on Delta and stayed two nights before taking a Turkish Air flight to Odessa (Delta doesn't fly to Odessa) to board a Viking ship for a cruise on the Black Sea and up the Dneiper River. Thank goodness we were there just ahead of the riots that later broke out in Istanbul.

https://picasaweb.google.com/1066089...N-dv7e9o-GcJw#

This next album covers our time on the Viking Cruise called Footsteps of the Cossacks which went from Odessa to Kiev in the Ukraine with stops in the Crimean peninsula on the Black Sea and ended in Kiev.

https://picasaweb.google.com/1066089...n9zOyJrf24gwE#

The next album is just of Kiev, the city where the cruise ended and our independent travel began.

https://picasaweb.google.com/1066089...S6jJjHxc_9iwE#

And this final album is of our 5 days in Moscow to which we flew on Aeroflot from Kiev.

https://picasaweb.google.com/1066089..._cza_33_DW9AE#

Happy to try to answer any questions you may pose.
JulieVikmanis is offline  
Old Jun 30th, 2013, 11:34 AM
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Welcome back. Great photos. I'm thinking of combining Moscow and St. Petersburg with a trip to Lithuania next summer. We'll have a 14 year old with us. Do you think 5 days was a good amount of time for Moscow? Was it much more expensive than Paris or Rome? Have you been to St. Petersburg? Does it deserve more time than Moscow?

Where to next? Thanks for any advice.
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Old Jun 30th, 2013, 12:03 PM
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Yes, great pictures. Tell your DH "great job."

But I would like to read more about your impressions of these various cities and your independent travel.

One question I have in general about visiting places that use the Cyrillic alphabet: how hard is it to navigate, say, trains and buses? I've never worried about the language barrier when visiting places like Poland or Slovenia, but at least they use the same alphabet I know - and I can read a train schedule without knowing the language. The Cyrillic alphabet makes me nervous.

Did you take any trains or buses?

How was the Aeroflot flight?

Did you feel safe walking around Kiev?
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Old Jun 30th, 2013, 12:06 PM
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And how was the food? What did you eat and where?
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Old Jun 30th, 2013, 12:06 PM
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Hi Marija, Thanks. Glad you liked the photos.

We had a guide for the Kremlin and a guide and driver for a trip through the city which saved a lot of time. So I would say that the real highlights of inner Moscow could be done in 3 days, certainly 4. We have been to St. Petersburg, also with a guide and driver for 2 days during a cruise, and saw a lot in that time. In general I think many people think that however many days you decide to spend in Moscow, St. Petersburg deserves a bit more, probably at least another day. Keep in mind, however, that in Moscow we did not venture outside the city. If you would decide to do a day trip to the Sergeiv (sp?) Monastery which looks very worthwhile, you could certainly add more time to Moscow. It really depends on how much time you have. You can certainly use up 5 days in Moscow, especially if you do a day trip. I'd say, let your available time and budget dictate how long you spend because....

Yes, Moscow was very expensive, especially if you want to drink wine with meals. Never found a bottle under $100 on a menu. There are lots of ways to spend/flaunt a lot of money since SOME of the people there are very wealthy--while others are decidedly not. I will admit to being a bit intimidated by the place, not knowing the alphabet, having been raised during "Soviet Times", etc. and we opted to travel more luxuriously than we normally do to prevent any problems. It worked, but it made it one of our most costly trips ever. Certainly more costly than any of our trips to Rome and Paris.

I think dividing your time between St. Petersburg, Moscow and Lithuania sounds like a good trip. Enjoy.

We're next off for Provence where our level of comfort and the available beauty should make me happier than the stretch we needed to make to travel on this trip.
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Old Jun 30th, 2013, 12:31 PM
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Julie...as usual, outstdanding pics...brought back many memories of my Russian travels, during and after the so-called cold war ("faux" war in my opinion)...things are mighty different. Last there in 2008 on a Viking cruise, Moscow to St. Pete..and later independently to Belarus and Ukraine. Looks like you had some good weather, also. Your foodie pics are tantalizing. Where to next?
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Old Jun 30th, 2013, 12:37 PM
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Julie, were there long lines to get into the Harem at Topkapi Palace?
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Old Jun 30th, 2013, 01:14 PM
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Thanks for the photos Julie. Recognized the two guys with the globe from Odessa! Pity you didn't get to Lviv, which was my favorite stop in Ukraine.

Marija - unlike a lot of posters I preferred Moscow to St. Petersburg - but I'm not a fan of baroque and St. Petersburg is all baroque. I thought there was a lot more variety in Moscow. Also, I'd recommend not just the Golden Ring towns, but stopping off in Novgorod between Moscow and St. Petersburg, and adding Riga in Latvia to Lithuania. (Pix of Novgorod: http://kwilhelm.smugmug.com/Travel/R...ovgorod-Russia )

Andrew - I'm lousy at languages but I found the Cyrillic alphabet quite easy to learn, and knowing it does make a big difference.
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Old Jun 30th, 2013, 02:37 PM
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Andrew, We were wimps in the matter of really going off to take public transport to get from place to place. We got sort of spooked when we read an English language newspaper story about an electrical fire in the metro--at the station just immediately by our hotel the morning of the day we arrived which caused little old Babushka ladies to have to climb 3 flights of metro stairs, and really didn't take public transport from that point on. Embarrassing but true. I'm sure it can be done, especially if you have a good map of the metro with stops listed in cyrillic and English.

Overall because our "independent" travel wasn't so independent, we really didn't have any problem with the alphabet difference. We stayed near the center, walked when we were not in the care of a guide, stayed on main streets, went to places we found in guidebooks, and did fine on our own--mostly in Arbat and area between Kremlin and Pushkin square. Don't know what would have happened if we'd have tried to go to Gorky Park on our own for instance.

The Aeroflot flight OTOH was fine. We had intended to travel with a friend who had been in Moscow 7 or 8 years ago and thought flying Aeroflot would be dreadful. it was not. In fact, on a 1 and 1/2 hour flight, they gave passengers in coach a decent sandwich which would not have been the case on Delta. Believe me. No problems at all. I also found the flight kind of fun. It was from Kiev to Moscow and the stewardesses (they were all female) were attired totally in orange (as in orange revolution) from dress to hat to shoes and even the barf bags were orange.

We felt fine walking about Kiev--both during the day and at night. But we stayed at the Radisson Blu which probably meant it was in an ok part of town. What we didn't like was going to the market which coud have been a fantastic experience and finding babushka ladies more or less "guarding" their produce against anyone taking pictures--for no reasonable purpose. Old habits die hard.

Maybe it was us. Maybe it was them, but the experience was different, very different, from being in France, Italy, or even Croatia or Tallin in Estonia, for instance.

DH is from Latvia and I have a Swedish heritage, so the food was wonderful to us. He had pickled vegatables everywhere. I had meat dumplings in sour cream and everything in between. We loved it. Folks raised on Big Macs would probably find it abhorrent. See the pictures at the end of each album (I'm the food photographer.) To us it was beautiful, tasty--but never cheap.

Stu Tower, Glad you liked the pix and especially the food pix. I thought of you as we traversed so many areas. We leave for Marseille and Provence on Tuesday. It will be much "easier,I know."
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Old Jun 30th, 2013, 02:47 PM
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I did travel independently in Ukraine, aside from hotel reservations and train tickets, and once I established that in the Crimea they spoke Russian not Ukrainian I didn't have too much touble. I also mostly traveled independently in Russia, again aside from accommodation (home stays) and train tickets, plus transfers. If I had been staying in hotels I wouldn't have needed the transfers. But I definitely needed Cyrillic.
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Old Jun 30th, 2013, 03:33 PM
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happytravlr,

We did not go to the Topkapi palace but have on previous trips. Did not have difficulty getting in. With only a day and a half enroute to Odessa, we just sort of enjoyed whatever came along. Which is a wonderful way to travel.
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Old Jun 30th, 2013, 04:31 PM
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Thanks Julie (and thursdaysd). Someday maybe I'll finally do a trip with a few of these places - if I can get over my fear of Cyrillic letters!
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Old Jun 30th, 2013, 06:51 PM
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Very lovely pictures.

Since I too have been to many of those places it was a nice memorable review of a past trip.

Thank you very much for posting
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Old Jun 30th, 2013, 07:33 PM
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Bookmarking. This is a trip I've wanted to do, so want to make time to read and look.
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Old Jul 1st, 2013, 09:29 AM
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I really enjoyed the photos, did you see us waving to you in your photos in Sultanhamet? Just joking, our ship docked the morning the riots started so we were just after you.

From our balcony on Celebrity Reflection we saw tracers, helicopters with search beams, whiff of pepper gas, lots of noise, whistles, etc. Certainly didn't feel personally threatened but very concerned for the people.

I would love to sail into the Black Sea and to see Yalta and want to get to Moscow. I have only been to St Petersburg which I enjoyed. We had a former Intourist guide, car and driver for 3 days, saw and learned so much more than we would have on our own.

What did you think of the river cruise?

When are you headed to Provence?

Thanks again to you both.
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Old Jul 1st, 2013, 09:57 AM
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Julie, thanks ever so much. We'll be in Odessa and Sevastopol but not Yalta which is unfortunate. I'm looking forward to a different experience. Cyrillic alphabet, here I come.
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Old Jul 1st, 2013, 04:10 PM
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Cathinjoetown, We enjoyed the cruise but it is one of the more "estoeric" of the Viking offerings and I assume from my experience anyway taken by folks who have done a lot of travel (overheard conversations at dinner with snatches of "when we were in Dar Es Salaam" and "well we really enjoyed Luxur", etc. These were blue haired people (myself among them) for whom this may have been the only remaining notch to put on their travel belts. The food was wonderful--small portions for the older appetite, so nothing was wasted, with an emphasis on the local cuisine. Nice crew with great service. Our tour guide was outstanding.

We leave tomorrow for Provence. I have just learned that Marseille is putting 40,000 lavendar plants around their old harbor where our hotel will be for their status as European Culture Capitol for 2013. I am ecstatic.

Treesa, I may have enjoyed Sevastopol more than Yalta--at least the city itself if not the surrounding options. Have dinner overlooking Artillery Bay. Try to take in a concert by the combined Russian and Ukranian navy chorus. quite fun.

I've read lots of posts by people who found it quite easy to learn the cyrillic alphabet. I've never been good at languages so I gave up quickly. Good luck.
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Old Jul 1st, 2013, 06:51 PM
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Your photos are simply lovely! I feel as though I went on the trip with you. well done, and thanks for the journey. Most interesting all the way.
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Old Jul 2nd, 2013, 01:33 AM
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Julie,

Thanks for the info--can't get my husband interested in river cruises but thought he might like the cruise on the Black Sea. Not sure, but we both enjoy cruises which have interesting ports. Not bothered about the blue hairs, I haven't seen my natural color since age 35, am sure it's 100% white by now. We would fit in.

Really looking forward to your photos of Provence and the lavender field in the middle of Marseille! Our plants are probably two weeks from blooming but we had a terrible, terrible spring (SW of Toulouse). Have a wonderful time!
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Old Jul 2nd, 2013, 02:09 AM
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Cathinjoetown, We have plans to do the lavendar drives that Stu Dudley and Fodors recommend in the Luberon and east of there and I'm afraid we might be just a bit ahead of full bloom too. Tough when you plan a trip around something like this and then the timing is off. Friends of ours went on a river cruise in Holland expecting to see tulips everywhere and could only see them in greenhouses. I guess it's been unseasonably cool over much of Europe this year.

BTW if your husband is any kind of history buff, he might really enjoy the Black Sea cruise. Mine is and I think he enjoyed it more than I did for that reason. I'm not one for cruising in general though DH is--I think because he's the driver otherwise and he gets to relax a lot more on a cruise. Anyway, if I had to pick it would always be a river cruise over a big ship cruise. so much easier, smaller and more personal.
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