Hotels in Simferopol

The administrative core of Simferopol is compact: Republic Park, Lenin Square, the government buildings and the main shopping streets take about half an hour to cover on foot. The Tavrida Central Museum and the Ethnographic Museum are both a short walk away, which is why the center suits people who came for the city itself rather than for a connection. Just keep the morning traffic in mind — if you are heading for the coast the next day, leave yourself some extra time.

Trains, buses and minibuses leave the station for Yalta, Sevastopol, Yevpatoria and Kerch, so the Zheleznodorozhny district is the logical choice if Simferopol is a transfer point for you. Rooms here are plainer and quieter than in the center, but in the morning you won't have to haul your luggage across town. The station building itself, with its tower and clock, is a proper city landmark — worth walking past even on a one-night stop.

The airport sits northwest of the city, and with a late arrival or an early departure there is no sense in driving into the center — the trip there and back eats up an extra hour of sleep. The hotels along the airport road are built for exactly this kind of overnight: parking, an easy check-in, a cafe on site. In the morning you get in the car and it's a short straight run to the terminal.

The Tavrida highway leads out of Simferopol toward Kerch and Sevastopol, the South Coast road toward Alushta and Yalta, and both begin on the eastern edge of town. If you are driving in the morning, it is easier to sleep near the bypass: at rush hour the center seizes up under commuter traffic and transfers to the sea, and going around saves roughly an hour. The hotels here are no-frills, but they come with parking in the yard and access to the highway practically from the doorstep.

Pobedy Avenue and Lermontova Street make up the residential side of Simferopol next to Gagarin Park: greenery, quiet courtyards and none of the noise of busy Kirova Avenue. At the same time the turn onto the Tavrida highway is about ten minutes away by car, so the area helps when you want a full night's sleep before an early drive to the South Coast. There is somewhere to go in the evening, too — half the city strolls through the park and around its ponds.

Zhigulina Roshcha and neighboring Mirnoye on the western edge are built up with new residential complexes, and apartments here are rented out by the night a whole stairwell at a time. The format works for families coming to Crimea for a week or two rather than passing through: your own kitchen, a washing machine and a parking space in the courtyard turn out to be calmer and more practical than a hotel room. The interchange for the South Coast is a quarter of an hour away along the bypass, and the center not much farther.

Simferopol has no sea access — the city lies in the Salgir valley, right in the middle of the peninsula — so all the water here is its own. Pools and saunas turn up in the central hotels and in the country-style complexes on the outskirts alike, where they come with a garden and barbecue areas. You appreciate that most in July and August, when the city is stifling and you would rather not spend half a day driving to the sea and back.

Simferopol is rarely the point of the trip, and there is no reason to overpay for a night you will see nothing of but the pillow. Mini-hotels and guest houses in the residential blocks give you a clean room and Wi-Fi without the hotel markup, and the station or the center is usually close by. Many of them take late arrivals — which matters when your train or flight gets in in the middle of the night.