Ukraine: Black Sea resort shows treasures to tourists
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Tourists enjoy the sun on a Black Sea beach in Yalta.
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YALTA, Ukraine (AP) -- Even if visitors don't drink a drop at the celebrated wineries, they sound intoxicated when they tell what they saw in Yalta: an Arabian-Scottish castle, a river that ran full of wine, a soaring sequoia tree.
The Crimean peninsula, where Yalta is a principal resort, is a fantasia where the works of humans are striking and the works of nature are almost preposterously dramatic.
The region conciliates boundless steppes with forbidding peaks. The gold of sandy beaches slices between emerald vegetation on shore and the azure waters of the Black Sea.
The ruins of ancient cave towns, temples and fortresses testify to a history as varied and passionate as the landscape. Greeks, Romans, barbarian Huns and wild nomads all left their marks, as did Tatar, Turkish, Genoese and Venetian adventurers.
Russian Czar Nicholas II built a palace outside Yalta that later became the site of one of the critical meetings of the last century -- the 1945 gathering of Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin that partitioned Europe and ushered in the Cold War.
It is a heady history and many visitors like to contemplate it over a glass or two of Crimea's equally heady, but delicate, sweet wines at the renowned Magarach wine institute, a scenic ride by excursion boat from downtown Yalta.
Some 20,000 wines are available at Magarach, concocted from its 3,200 vine species. The ports, sherries and muscats are especially well received, but Magarach also makes fine dry wines.
The institute is surrounded by the Arcadian splendor of the Nikita Botanical Gardens, where some 30,000 species of plants from across the globe flourish. A soaring sequoia is among visitors' favorites.
Lingering Soviet-era ways
The Magarach wine institute offers tours and tastings to visitors.
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Although the winery is cherished by locals, it has endured abuses from outsiders. When Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev launched an anti-alcohol campaign in 1986, thousands of acres of its vines were torn up. Magarach's director at the time, Pavlo Holodryha, hung himself in despair at the carnage.
During World War II, vast amounts of the treasured wines were poured into a river after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union for fear the wine would fall into marauders' hands.
"The river was bloody with wine," remembered Serhiy Leonidovych, an elderly Yalta resident. "I remember local sots drawing wine right from the river and gulping it greedily."
Hard times still trouble the Crimea even as visitors revel in its rich sights. Many houses get water for only a few hours a day, although hotels manage to keep the supply on for the region's tourists.
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The Swallow's Nest offers sweeping views of the surrounding area.
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Although visitors are key to the region's well-being and most Ukrainians have an innate sense of hospitality, Soviet-era ways still afflict Yalta with lazy waiters and dour saleswomen who seem to apply maximum effort not to see customers.
That may cast a brief pall over a visit or it may add to a tourist's appreciation of Yalta's joys.
One of the most entertaining is the bizarrely gorgeous Vorontsov Palace, where incongruous architectural styles meet: English Romantic, Scottish, Arabian. Somehow, these styles get along and the palace echoes the capricious shapes of its mountain backdrop.
Another favorite is the ornate building known as The Swallow's Nest, stacked on a steep cliff overlooking the sea. Now a restaurant whose prices soar far higher than the food quality, it is best admired from outside.
Copyright 2003 The
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