Stories by Matthias Part 3

Ok, so I know how all of you have been dying to hear another one of my stories, so here goes.

I think it was on the 27th of Sept, we decided that we wanted to see a little of the countryside. Having talked to a lady that we had made friends with at the orphanage, her suggestion was to a place called Balaklava. She said it was about an 30 min bus ride to get there and it was a really cool place by the water. She said they had nice beaches that Emerald would like and it was real pretty. We decided that we would try and make the journey and find our way to Balaklava.

Me being the directional mastermind in the family I decided to look it up on Google maps to find just exactly we were headed. Balaklava is due south of where we are staying here in Sevastopol. How hard could it be to find a bus to take us there? Our friend said that we needed to take bus 20 to a place called 5 Kilometer and from there get on bus 9 and that would take us to Balaklava. Easy, so we thought.
Finding bus 20 was very easy because I always try and pay attention to the vehicles around us when we are going to and from the orphanage. It runs a similar route as the bus we take (109), it just makes a different turn about half way through the route. So I new where it would stop closest to our apartment. We boarded bus 20 headed to 5 KM and we excited about our day ahead.

We arrived at 5 KM about 20 minutes later and proceeded to look for bus 9 that we would need to get on to take us to Balaklava. We walked across the road to the spot where we saw all of the busses picking up people and waited for bus 9 to come. We waited for about 30 minutes and decided that we should probably look elsewhere to find the bus 9 route. We decided that trying to ask someone where bus 9 picked up people. We asked a younger guy that spoke a little English and he told us to wait where we had been waiting so we headed back there to wait some more. We waited another 30 minutes and tried asking some more people not really finding anyone who spoke English this time. We headed back over to where our bus 20 had initially dropped us off to try and find someone over there to help us. We finally found a younger lady who spoke English and she showed us where it was. The funny thing was if we would have just looked behind us when we would have gotten off bus 20 we would have seen a whole row of bus 9s waiting to take people. We got on to one of the buses and were finally ready to head to the beach.

In all it took us about 2½ hours to get to Balaklava but now we were finally there and ready to head to the beach. We were a little hungry when we got there so we decided to get a little bite to eat before we headed to the beach. We found a pizza place and tried our luck there, after about 15 minutes of trying to communicate we figured out what we wanted and ordered it. We also each got an Americana coffee to sip on while we waited for our pizza.

It was a pretty little restaurant right on the port where all the boats come in. There was a bird cage with two birds in the restaurant that Emerald loved to watch. It was kind of nice because they kept Emerald occupied while we waited for the food. This is a picture of her watching the birds.

 After we ate our delicious pizza we headed out to find a boat to take us to the beach. We found one without much effort because people are always trying give people rides to the beach. The fun part was when we started off in the boat to the beach. We were probably about half way to the beach when we got pulled over by the boat police. I am not sure what all happened but we were all freaked out because we had forgotten our passports. We were sure they were going to ask everyone on the boat for ID but thankfully they didn’t. I think they gave the boat driver a ticket or something because he didn’t have the proper paperwork. That took about 20 minutes of just bobbing up and down in the water waiting for them to get all the paper work done. Then we were off again to the beach for a relaxing time.

There was no kind of dock or anything at the beach so they just pull up as close as they can to the beach and you have to jump off into the water and walk to the shore. We were finally to the beach of Balaklava called Silver Beach. We proceeded to set out our blanket and get all of our stuff situated. There were not a whole lot of people there so we found a nice spot to lay. We lounged around for a little while and then I decided to take Emerald out for a swim. The water was pretty cold and Emerald didn’t like it at first but she got used to it in no time and floated out into the water with daddy holding her tight. She loved the water so much and I even got Lindsay to come out for a swim with us too. We had a great time in the water and stayed in for about 15-20 minutes. We were all starting to get cold so we decided to head back to our blanket and dry off. We laid out in the sun for a while and played in the sand a little with Emerald and the it was time to head back. We got some good photos of Emerald sunbathing and playing in the water.

We got back on a boat and headed back to the port to head for home. It was a fun day and we were so glad that we got to see Balaklava and all that it had to offer. We took some good photos of the scenery too.

This is what you see when you look out while on the beach.

These are the cliffs all around the beach… so pretty. 

We landed and headed back to the bus stop to head home for the day. We stopped at a little grocery store and got some ice cream for the ride home. We boarded our number 9 bus to head back to 5 KM where we would connect to number 20 that would take us home. We had a great time in Balaklava.