Sevastapol

Sevastapol, a city of about 350,000 is on the tip of the Crimean Peninsula in Ukraine.

This is the port where our tender docked.

We joined with two other couples on a tour led by Sasha, a local tour guide.

Our first stop was a palace built by the Khans who once ruled the area.  It was very different than European palaces.  It seemed like a mixture of Asian and Middle Eastern, but some of it reminded me of Scandanavian!

 Beautiful embroidery

 "Divan" means council

The ceiling

The Quran

Next, we visited a Byzantine-era monastery carved into a mountainside.

After lunch we toured a nuclear submarine port and repair facility built during the Cold War.  It was located in a huge tunnel the Russians bore out of the mountainside.  The work was done at night to evade detection from the sky.  It had huge steel doors to shield it from a nuclear warhead.

 Map showing where the submarine storage tunnel was built into the mountainside.

 Thick doors to protect from nuclear attack

I think this sign says "Loose lips sink ships!"  Or something to that effect.  We were amused that some of their words include 3's and 4's.

We finished with a visit to a very large panorama of the Battle of Sevastapol in which we learned how heroic the Russian soldiers were in fighting the invading Brits and French in the Crimean War.  We were not allowed to take pictures inside, but it was quite impressive.