This was mostly a day of bus travel, so I did not take many pictures. However, I arrived in Sevastopol just before sun down and took a stroll along the famous Grafskiy Pristan. Sevastopol is a household name for us Brits, mainly because of the siege, and if you like Tolstoy then you will already know something about Sevastopol's remarkable topography, because it was all described in his gripping Sketches from Sebastopol, a first hand description of the heroic and remarkably successful (thanks partly to the competence of Admirals Kornilov and Nakhimov) defence of Sebastopol against the British and French forces. Of course, the city ultimately fell, after a whole year of siege, but the allies suffered such losses that they were forced to quit the Crimea shortly after. Tolstoy knew what he was talking about, because he was there, a second lieutenant in the thick of the fighting.

Sevastopol was a closed city during Soviet years - strictly out of bounds to foreigners, as it was the home of the Black Sea Fleet, noawadays happily it is open to foreigners.

I passed an abandoned building ten years ago when I first visited Sevastopol. At that time there were swarms of people climbing over it with saws and all other kinds of tools, plundering what steel they could hack off to sell as scrap. Those were diffficult times. The building is pretty much as it was except with less steel in it, more stripped out - but the main steel beams were too much for individuals, so they remain untouched.

William Eggleston left his tricycle nearby:

I just love Soviet monumental statues, looking forward to socialist realism becoming popular again, I don't think it'll be long:

Grafskiy Pristan: