My cruise in the Black Sea on Princess Cruises' Royal Princess is like a never-ending history lesson with stories about this tzar or that tzarina, Stalin and Lenin.
It's all fascinating stuff, especially for me as I devoted four years of my life to learning who did what to whom and why in Russia for the past 400 years and now I am able to see it all come alive.
Thursday's history lesson was in Yalta, where I did an excursion to the Livadia Palace. The first half, on the ground floor, is dedicated to the conference, held here, where Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt met between February 4 and 11 1945 and carved up Europe after the Second World War.
This is not the actual table where they sat, but you can see the plaque with Churchill's name written in Russian and some pictures taken at the time.
The second half of the tour takes place upstairs, where you can see the former imperial rooms photographs of the last tzar, Nicholas II, and his family.
As the tour ended, our guide raced through an explanation about how the family was imprisoned after the revolution and then murdered, with their bodies burned and buried in the forest near Ekaterinburg.
She ended with the words "and on that tragic note, it's time for the shopping I promised you" as she bustled past us and out of the door. Somehow I don't think tragedy was really on her mind.
Under the Soviets, the palace became a sanatorium for the workers and during the war it was headquarters for the Nazis who occupied the area - and sadly looted most of the furniture so there is very little that is original. After the war, Stalin added it to his list of summer residences. It later became a sanatorium again and in 1991, after the fall of the Soviet Union and when the Ukraine gained independence, it became a museum.
And a very popular one with the locals as well as visiting cruisers judging by the number of groups being shown around while we were there.
Today - Friday - the history lesson was in Odessa, famous for the Potemkin Steps that featured in the Eisenstein film Battleship Potemkin.
The city was founded in 1794 by Catherine the Great, providing a warm weather port for the Russian Empire. A visit to her statue, put up just a couple of years ago to replace one dedicated to the sailors from the aforementioned battleship, is on every excursion itinerary.
I'm told both Stalin and Hitler also had statues here at one time or another.
Odessa is a very cosmopolitan city, with a nice, bright feel and an eclectic mix of architecture in Greek, Baroque, Classic and Renaissance style. Underneath is the longest network of underground tunnels in the world - 2,500km if laid in a straight line.
There's also this lovely park, very French, with this monument to a chair. Apparently if you sit on it you will become a millionaire. Naturally I had to give it a go. I'll let you know if it works!
I also loved the Mother-in-Law Bridge, where newly-weds put a lock to signify their eternal love and mothers-in-law stroll every day to make sure it hasn't been undone. Well it's a good story anyway.
Now we're on the way to Varna in Bulgaria. More on that - and Royal Princess - to come.
Jane Archer
