We enter the second station,
and exit the cable car. From there, we enter another cable car which
will take us to the top. Now we are really getting high off the ground,
maybe 500 or 600 feet above the ground, and it's pretty creepy to look
down!!! We are still a long way from the top station, it still looks
like a tiny speck on the mountain. Actually, it is a five or six story
tall building.
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We finally get to the top,
and we are still alive!!! Yay!!!! :-)
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Here's what Yalta looks like
from two miles up! (It's really creepy to look straight down!!!)
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Maybe you noticed that in the above photos, there is a peak that is even much higher than the top of the cable car station. We come back in two days and we hike up there. I did not take my regular camera up there - Instead, I took my video camera. It was so high, the hike was so steep. At the very top it was fantastic, you have to be there to understand. I went all the way to the very top of the rocky crag peak - Marina got close, but would not come to the very top. The rocks got very slippery at the top, and I sort of sat down and "crab-walked" on all fours for the last part - it was very slippery. I haven't looked at my video tape yet, but if it is good, then I might make copies and give them out! -- I think it will be very good :-)
At the top of the mountain, there is sort of a plateau. There is a road that leads up here, so there are some cars (on our second trip up here, we take the road back down - it is a horrible road, huge pot-holes, extremely tight turns, and there is a stone wall on the side of the road to stop cars from going off the edge - only the stones have been knocked away in dozens of places, and I don't mean a stone or two missing here or there - I mean the stone wall is totally destroyed for 10 or 20 feet in lots of places. Now, I think to myself, what knocked the stone wall down? It wasn't someone running their bicycle into the stone wall - no sir, I don't think that's what did it. I think that vehicles knocked the stone wall down (as they crashed through the wall!!!). The pot-holes are so bad, the bus nearly tips over just from them.
Here's a photo of the plateau
- you can ride horses or camels, have dinner one of the open-air restaurants,
or go on another tour from here.
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We have dinner with our new
friends, Bern and his wife.
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Bern and I have Shaslik of lamb cooked over an open fire, it's delicious. Marina and Bern's wife have Shaslik of pork. Also, we have rice and bread. Before we head back down, we decide to all meet again that evening and have a late dinner at a restaurant on the boardwalk - this time in an actual wooden ship that was raised out of the water about 80 years ago, and has been serving as a restaurant ever since - it's a really interesting restaurant. Bern gives me his business card, and invites Marina and I to visit their home in Sweden. Who knows? Perhaps one day we will. I am sending Bern some of these emails, as I promised I would.
Okay, well that's all for this chapter. There's still more good stuff to come - there's the other castle of the Romanoff's that you haven't seen yet, and more!
Cya - Steve.