As soon as we arrive in Simferopol from Moscow and walk out of the airport, we are besieged by a horde of taxi drivers offering to take us to any city on the peninsula, be it Alushta, Sevastopol or Bakhchysarai. But we already had a plan: We wanted to start our vacation by testing one of Crimea's most exotic tourist attractions – the world's longest trolleybus route, which links Simferopol and Yalta.
Every 20 minutes, trolleybus 52 takes its passengers to the southern coast of Crimea for an affordable fare of 129 rubles (around $2) from a stop outside the airport. Over three hours, the trolleybus covers a distance of 96 kilometers, passing Simferopol, the ridges of the Crimean Mountains and a fragment of the coastline. |
"Where do I get off for the Botanical Garden?" a woman asks other passengers. "In Nikita. I'll show you where," one of them replies. Another one joins the conversation: "I'm getting off there too. I'll show you." The Nikitsky Botanical Garden is still a few kilometers away from us in the direction of Yalta, but concerned tourists keep asking whether we have arrived there yet.
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