Moldova Classic Tour 8 days

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In 1812 for the first time Bessarabia was taken away from Moldavia by the Russians after another war with the Turks. Since then Bessarabia was a ping pong ball between Moldavia and Russia, depending who was winning the Russian-Turkish wars. In 1940 after the Ribbentrop Molotov pact, Bessarabia was taken away for the last time. After the collapse of Soviet Union a new country was born from the ashes of the Old Soviet Empire. During this trip you will visit a 25 years old country in which the most important assets are... the WINE and the COMMUNISM, which is still living through an independent Republic of Transnistria. You will explore the most picturesque sites of our sunny country and have the most unique experiences meeting local families and learning about our daily life and traditions.

1 ^st Day

Arrival Chisinau

Included highlights:

You’ll meet your local guide and driver at the airport. After check-in we start our walking city tour of Chisinau including: the Organ Hall, the City Hall, the Nativity Cathedral, the Bell Tower and Arch of Triumph, the Government building, Steven the Great and Saint’ Park with the Moldovan Classics Alley and bust of A. Pushkin, Statue of Steven the Great and Saint, the Parliament building, the National Opera, the Presidential Palace etc. Dinner in a local restaurant specialized in traditional Moldovan cuisine and tour program preview. Accommodation 4 * Hotel.

2 ^nd Day

Gagauzia – Manuc Manor from Hincesti

Included highlights:

Today we drive to Comrat, the capital of the smallest Autonomy in the world - Gagauzia. In order to understand who the “gagauz” are we shall pay a visit to the Museum of History and Ethnography from Besalma village. There we will learn about the history, culture and daily life of the Gagauz from ancient times to the modern days. After enjoying a mini concert of Gagauz songs and dances, we head to Copceac to visit the last working “colhoz” from Moldova - a type of run by state farm. Here we will have a traditional Gagauz lunch, and experience the old communist life. The “Victory” collective farm was founded in 1947 and now is the leader in producing and exporting fruits and vegetables in the southern area of Moldova. It is the only surviving collective farm after the collapse of USSR. Return to Chisinau and on the way stop in Hincesti at Manuc Manor. The mansion itself - a true French-style castle, with a winter garden, guard towers and a park - was built in the second half of the XIX century by Alexander Bernardazzi, Moldova’s most famous architect and for several decades has been owned by the Mirzoian family, Manuc-Bey's descendants. Just for record, Manuc – Bey was the one to intermediate the ceding of Bessarabia to the Tzarist Empire in 1812, therefore we can call him one of the parents of today Republic of Moldova. Same accommodation. Free dinner.

3 ^rd Day

Cricova – Pocrovca - Soroca

Included highlights:

Today you will visit Cricova winery, which is a real underground wine city with wide streets, warehouses, tasting rooms. The total length of its galleries is 120 km. The constant annual temperature of +12C and 82-95 % humidity are perfect conditions for aging quality wine there. Cricova is also well known for brilliant sparkling-wines produced by the classic French technology. Excursion and wine- tasting. On the way to Soroca we will meet the old believers in the village of Pocrovca. This Russian community lives quite isolated, trying to keep their traditions alive. They came about 200 years ago, settled down here and since then, they form a quite prosperous village. Here we will have lunch to a family, discuss about Old Russian traditions and taste several original dishes. For desert, we will get the highlight taste of the day, their homemade raspberry jam, unique in the world. Arrival in Soroca town and accommodation in 3* Hotel. Free dinner Day

4 ^th Day

Cooking Moldovan dishes in Calarasi area

Included highlights:

Want to learn how to cook Moldovan traditional food? Today is your lucky day!!! At "Casa Parinteasca" Craft Centre from Palanca village, you will get to know not only the Moldovan traditional costumes and ethnographic customs, but you will also learn how to cook the best known Moldavian dish – “sarmale”. The group will be split in 2 teams: one will make sauer cabbage rolls filled with rice and meat. The second team will do the same, but rolls of grape leaves. After we prepare everything, the lady of the house will put them in the oven for 3 hours at least, meanwhile we will visit the Honey Museum from Raciula, learn about the life of bees, taste different kind of honey and other honey products. Later we visit several families who produce different kind of liquors, one family who produces different kind of cheeses, and the third – producing different products made from the apples of their own orchard -red, yellow, sweet, aromatic, fizzy, fresh, baked or preserved, in cakes or tarts, juice or jam - we find here all kinds of apples, this being the house’s specialty.

Coming back to”Casa Parinteasca” Museum we will enjoy a very special lunch, trying also the “sarmale” we have made. Traditional dishes will be served with the best local wine, while the organic herbal tea, accompanied by quince jam will surprise you with its amazing taste.

After lunch we might visit 1-2 monasteries from the region, and continue to Chisinau , free dinner and same accommodation.

5 ^th Day

Mimi Wine Castle and departure home or… Experience Odessa Option

Included highlights:

After breakfast, we head back to Chisinau, but not before making a stop at Castle Mimi, which is currently listed among the most beautiful architectural masterpieces in the world of wine. The story of the castle begins in 1893 when Constantin Mimi, the last governor of Bessarabia, planted the first grape vines on the place that would become legend over the years. The area of Codru, where the winery is placed, has a unique microclimate and a very good terroir, as a result having intense and aromatic wines. Excursion, wine tasting and lunch in the castle. Arrival in Chisinau, free time and departure home.

Services included:

All services as mentioned in the program

Van or minibus luxury coach with A/C

Professional guide at your all days

Optional highlights:

Spend an unforgettable day discovering Odessa city from Ukraine. From Etcetera winery to Odessa are 70km, and the border is quite easy to be crossed by cars, so it will be a pity not to do it. Upon arrival - Full Guided Sightseeing Odessa Tour. Odessa is acknowledged Ukrainian intersection point of diverse cultures, languages and trades. You will be able to witness masterpieces of architecture, such as famous Opera and Ballet theatre, designed by Viennese architects, Potiomkinskaya Stairs, Primorskiy boulevard, the One-wall building. You will also enjoy the view of Sea Port Terminal, get acquainted with Odessa Port’s history, its present life and prospects from the upside, and see the Monument to Duke De Richelieu - the founder of Odessa, Catherine the Great empress-the founder of Odessa etc. Leave home from Odessa in the evening or spend one more day in this amazing city.

6 ^th Day

Transnistria - Noul Neamt Monastery – Etcetera

Included highlights:

Today we shall do a Treasure Hunt – but because we are going to Transnistria, off course, the main treasure will be the Lenin Statues that they inherited from the Soviet time. We will drive through Dubassari, Grigoriopol and other villages, where you will be amazed about the communist monuments still to be seen everywhere. Transnistria - is a breakaway territory within the internationally recognized borders of Moldova, but still retains the look of a Communist state and it’s called “the last remaining Stalinist dictatorship in Europe”. City tour of Tiraspol, the capital of Transnistria and visit the Museum of Bender Tragedy dedicated to the bloody conflict from 1992, at the time of the Soviet Union's collapse.

For lunch, let’s go to the Noul Neamt Monastery, quite an experience. A local monk will guide us around, showing the monastery library, give us wine from the Monastery Cellars and explain us how religion survives in the Last Soviet Frontier of Europe.

In the evening we shall arrive to Etcetera Winery, where we will get also accommodated. The winery was built in 2009 and at the moment it is surrounded by 50 ha of vineyards, giving a picturesque view to the visitors. Etcetera is one of the best wineries in Moldova, if not the best one, as in 2016 they won second price at Decanter with their Chardonnay. Traditional dinner and wine tasting.

What People Say

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Have you ever wanted to go on a culture-wine-food tour? In California? France? Italy? Please, have some imagination! Be a little adventurous and go on one in Romania and Moldova.

It was my good luck to participate in a tour organized by Ways Travel, during which i checked out the many wonders of Romania and Moldova.

Our group on the bus was an international gang of nine – a Belgian, a German, a Norwegian, an Australian, a few Americans of interesting ethnic alloys and me, dual Dutch and American citizen. What can I say, it was an experience just sitting on a bus with these people and hear their war stories and get initiated into the workings of the behind-the-scenes travel industry.

Leader of our tribe was the fabulous tour guide Victoria, who speaks four languages, English, German, Russian, Romanian, one of those people who makes a simple bilingual person such as myself feel humble and uneducated.

The trip was a symphony of history, food, drink, music and dance. Dancing with the Gypsies no less. I tell you, it was fabulous, it was intoxicating. We got history – a dizzying whirl of wars and battles and bloody strife. Of conquests and annexations, of armies rampaging through the countryside, raping, pillaging and impaling. We heard colorful tales about Dacian tribes, the Roman Empire, the Red Horde, the Saxons, the Ottoman Empire, the communist era under Ceausescu. And let’s not forget to mention good old Count Dracula, Vlad the Impaler, who hailed from Transylvania. Really, we deserved every drop of hootch we got along the way to recover from all the tragedies we vicariously suffered through.

In Romania we loved the beautiful towns of Sibiu and Sighisoara. In Sighisoara we missed seeing the house where Dracula was born because a movie was being filmed and they’d closed it off for visitors. Fortunately, we had a liqueur and brandy tasting to cheer us up. We hadn’t had lunch yet and our stomachs were empty, which helped raise the mood quickly.

A highlight was our visit to the home of a Roma family in Transylvania and learning more about their culture and lifestyle. (You can read a story about this on my blog here.) Not all Gypsies are beggars living in the streets of large cities. It’s always a good thing to be disabused of your prejudices and preconceived notions.

We stayed in excellent hotels and lodges, as well as in a humble hostel run by a monastery. We ate fancy restaurant food as well as simple village fare. We saw exquisite as well as cheery architecture, visited opulent cathedrals as well as the modest underground monastery chapel in Orhei Vechi, not far from Chisinau. The vino flowing across the miles was a charming mix of the good, the bad and the holy. The holy being the wine we tasted in a monastery, blessed by the priests. Unfortunately, the blessing did not transform it into nectar of the gods, but the dinner there was quite gourmet, all prepared from food grown by the monks without chemical assistance.

We also visited Transnistria, which is a rather unique place, as most of you will already know. It is also home to the famous Kvint brandy factory and would you believe, we went there for a brandy dégustation – seven varieties of brandy. It was very informative, interesting and intoxicating. It was also lunch time, but fortunately there was food. We eventually struggled out of there, back on the bus, across the border that is not a border, and traveled down to the Purcari wineries in the south of Moldova where we were treated to . . . you guessed it . . . a wine tasting. Of ten types of wine. Not just any old village plonk, either. No, we got to sip the wine of kings, queens and tsars. Our livers got a workout that day.

I’m going to stop here. There was more, much more, but I don’t want to give away everything, because what you should do, really, is check out Ways Travel’s website at www.ways.md .

This trip has exceeded my expectations due mostly to your thoughtful guidance and warmth.

Thank you for sharing yout knowledge and passion about your wonderful country and for treating us like family.

Natalia is an excellent guide, full of interesting information about the places we went, recommended a very good hotel, a good van and driver. She is everything else you want/expect from a tour guide, and she was also a hard-working, intelligent and caring member of our team. Without her skills, flexibility and perseverance, our trip would not have been as successful as it was. She really cares about her clients, and has the willingness and ability to make whatever needs to happen, happen. She was great!