Wednesday morning after breakfast we headed toward Sevastopol for one more sightseeing stop before the trip back to the village. With the help of the trusty GPS we headed into Sevastopol and found the UNESCO world heritage site, Chersonesos. Greek colonists settled in the area around the 6th century BC.
We walked around the grounds seeing the Greek ruins, museum and a restored Orthodox church that commemorates the baptism of the Russian Price Vladimir in 988. The building site is believed to be where early Greeks had built their temples and later Christian churches. The church was restored and opened about 10 years ago; it was turned into a museum in early Soviet days, and had been open to the elements since sustaining extensive damage in WWII. It has an upper and lower sanctuary and is beautiful inside, and has a photo display explaining the building’s history on the walls of the steps to the upper floor (in 3 languages- English included) The statue outside the church is of Saint Andrew (the disciple) who is believed to have first evangelized the area.
There were a number of English-speaking tour groups on site- we even found the Mennonite Heritage tour group from Canada among them and talked to a few people. We ”overheard” an English-speaking guide when we first arrived, learning about the mint site, and the restored church while following a group from England.
Then we toured the medieval Greek collection, which along with items of everyday use like pottery (pictured), gaming dice, coins and tools included many Christian items in the collection with pieces of church decoration and crosses. One of the museum ladies noticed we spoke English and gave Garry a binder to use as the titles were in Russian.
After that we checked out the theatre (you can see Garry and his parents sitting in the top row of seats- it was in use from 3 century BC- 6th AD when it was filled in and Christian churches were built over it- the remains of one are standing. Finally we wandered among the uncovered foundations to the left of the entrance inside the two walls that provided protection for the city, before heading to the car and the long drive home around noontime.
Reading the booklet we bought in the way home, I decided we could have headed over the hill by the church toward the seashore for more ruins, but we can check those out when we take the boys in the springtime.
We found a buffet-style restaurant and filled up with gas(we even found a LukOil- Garry just got a 15% discount card last week) in Simferopol (the capital city in the middle of Crimea) around 2 o’clock and Garry happily passed cars and talked about childhood memories until we arrived in Zaporosia (25 Km to go) about 7 pm and made a quick stop for some cheeseburgers, Big Macs, and fries – we even got the boys some to take home- that’s where I took the night time photo of the city lights around 7 pm.
Arriving in the village at 7:30, Victor told Garry he had a surprise-so Garry and his father went out to the barn to check how things looked after being away for three days. Garry knew that the manure had been hauled to the field while he was gone. It turned out that Zera had just calved (too bad it is a bull calf- Garry was hoping for a heifer, of course.) Thursday morning they were up early, and got the last three loads of hay back here before lunch.
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