Come with us to the Crimea!

Between 27 October and 3 November (Sunday to Sunday) we invite our readers to the Crimean peninsula, one of the most beautiful region and most elegant recreation area of the former Russian empire. We arrive by plane from Budapest through Kiev to Simferopol, the capital of the autonomous Crimea, and from our two headquarters, a traditional Tatar family pension in Bakhchisaray and then a Russian one in Yalta we travel by bus around the ethnically diverse peninsula, which is rich both in ancient monuments and in fascinating natural beauties. We walk around the Tatar Bakhchisaray, visit the Khan’s Palace, go to see the historical cave cities, Chufut Kale, the capital of the Karaite Jews and their medieval cemetery, Eski Kerman, the former mountain center of the Tatar Khanate, and Mangup, the capital of the medieval Crimean Gothic kingdom. We go to see the Russian naval port in Sevastopol, enter the once secret submarine base, the sites of the Crimean war, the Genoese fortress in Balaklava, the votive chapel of the imperial family on the mountain above the beach of Foros, and the ruins of the ancient Greek Chersonesus, the birthplace of Russian Christianity. We make pilgrimage to the cave monasteries, mainly founded in Byzantine times, and renewed in the 19th century, of Inkerman, Mangup, the Ascension monastery, the St. Cosmas and Damian mountain pilgrimage church, the Armenian Holy Cross Monastery. We visit the summer palaces of the imperial family and of the Russian aristocracy, from the Vorontsov Palace in Miskhor to the Livadia Palace in Yalta, where the famous conference of 1945 was organized. And we make many trips to the mountains, from the bizarre basalt columns of Demerdzhi through the peak of Ai-Petri rising 1200 meters high right on the beach to the seashore rock formations of the Karadagh Nature Reserve.

Until departure we try to present the peninsula in detail on our ever expanding Crimean collection post.

Planned costs: 460 euro, which includes lodging, the bus and the guided tour. Final deadline of registration and payment: 29 August, Thursday. The above cost does not include the price of the plane ticket, which now, if we buy it in time, is about 200 euro (Budapest-Kiev-Simferopol and back). You can register via the usual wang@studiolum.com, where we will also provide more information and full program.