Day Schedule: Blossoming Crimea

➤Breakfast

➤ATV tour to Chatyr Dag

➤Visit mountain cheese daily

➤Cheese degustation

➤Transfer to Gurzuf

➤Gurzuf city tour

➤Overnight in a boutique hotel

The day starts with ATV 2-hours ride to Chatyr-Dag mountain, passing by steppe awaking after the winter, rivers and waterfalls will make you simply fall in love with Crimea in spring. Trek is not difficult but you’ll be accompanied by the instructor for your safety. A visit to the farm cheese dairy located in the mountain village will be a great addition to this day full of emotions. Here, we will taste local sorts of goat cheese. (Crimean wines are also served).

Then, we’ll move to the town-resort Gurzuf, known as Small Italy of Crimea for its narrow streets, flowering bushes and two-storey houses covered with tiled roofs. During the city-tour you will see Suuk-Su palace, a snow-white building made in the Italian Renaissance style. We will stay overnight in authentic Muskatel hotel or similar, with wonderful views

Spend an evening in cozy Gurzuf, go to sea-front. There is a promenade for leisurely stroll along it, choosing souvenirs in local shops, and enjoying the beauty of the twin rocky islands near the coast. These are the famous Adalars, one of the Crimean sights and the ID card of Gurzuf. Once the cliffs were connected to the coast, but the sea eventually destroyed this isthmus and now the islands "live" their own life.

The farmstead history of the Southern coast of the Crimea began with development of the Gurzuf lands. The earliest written sources report that there was Greek fortress here in the 6th century, on the high rock over the sea . In the 14th century Genoeses took over Gurzuf and at the end of the 15th century it was destroyed by the Turks who won all Crimean colonies of Genoeses. In 1472 on the way back to Russia from India famous traveler Afanasy Nikitin had a 5-days break here during his longest trip "Going beoynd three seas". After annexation of the Crimea in 1783 Gurzuf belonged to the general field-marshal Grigory Aleksandrovich Potyomkin (1739 — 1791), and from 1808 to 1822 — to the French duke Armand Emmanuel du Plessis of Richelieu (1766 — 1822), the governor general of Novorossiya a part of which part Crimea was at that times.

In 1811 the first European "dacha" in Crimea was built here in Gurzuf: four rooms and a penthouse, which belonged to the hero of Patriotic war of 1812 with Napoleon, general N.N. Rayevsky. In 1820 the young disgraced poet A.S. Pushkin spent three weeks here, considering them later on the "happiest moments" of his life. Nowadays, Pushkin's museum is located here.