Sochi, Krasnodar Krai, Russian Federation
MIRTtrip Notes: Begin touring today.
MIR trip Notes: Sochi is Russia's beloved resort on the Black Sea coast, often called the "Russian Riviera." Its theaters, clubs, casinos and spas fill with Russian and European vacationers from spring to fall, and its surrounding mountains attract skiers from fall to spring. The black and and pebble beaches are almost as popular with young people as the beaches of Fort Lauderdale in the U.S.
Humans have enjoyed Sochi's Mediterranean climate since 70,000 BC when the Neanderthals first began to settle here.
Russia conquered this area in 1898, officially founding Sochi near the source of sulphurous hot springs popular with health minded society people of that era. After the Bolshevik Revolution, Sochi was transformed as a vacation spot for ordinary working people throughout the Soviet Union, who would spend their mandated holidays here at huge "sanatoria," or resorts. Stalin had his favorite dacha here.
Inspect some of Sochi's 2014 Winter Olympics sites. Two compact districts, called the Coastal Cluster and the Mountain cluster, contain the completed venues. The Coastal Cluster in Imeretinskaya Bukhta accommodates the skating, hockey, and curling areas as well as The First Olympic Stadium, built to allow 40,000 people to attend the opening and closing ceremonies. The Mountain Cluster in Krasnaya Polyana includes the new Roa Khutor Alpine Resort, ski jumping and racing facilities and the Olympic Village.
A funicular travels from one cluster to the other.
Enjoy dinner at a local restaurant Gastro Pub (Sochi).
Overnight at Adriano Hotel and Resort, Adler, Krasnodar Kray - Meals: B,D
It has been a long day and I still need to pack up and shower before I go to bed and it is now almost 10 pm.
I woke up around 6 am and could not get back to sleep so I got up and did some computer things and potsed around my room. What did I accomplish really? I jumped the gun on breakfast at 8 am but most of our group were already there. I had some fruit, a slice of strudel, a square of omelet with an Americano coffee. I then went back for a slice of breakfast cake. It was OK - the fruit was good. Then I went back to my room, brushed my teeth and gathered up what I thought I would need for the day.
On the drive to the winter Olympics cluster at Krasnaya Polyana (7,000 ft), Michel and Olga gave us a lot of information about the Olympics. They cost 50 billion US dollars. We drove up a new highway built just for the Olympics in what had been a swamp along a fast running river, which seemed to be running toward the Olympic facility and not down toward the coast. Seemed odd to me. We walked up the hill a bit and saw all the buildings - housing and restaurants, souvenir shops, etc. We got the funicular - but it looked more like a gondola ski lift - or rather, series of them. We hopped on and off until I was really confused as to where we were. We walked around on the mid-level (Roa Khutor Alpine Resort) and then headed up to one of the peaks where we ate at a nice restaurant.
I had a traditional Russian borscht with sour cream and three rolls of pork fat. I ate the first roll without knowing what it was. Rami asked for the 3rd piece and I was very happy to share. I also had a dish of some Black Sea shellfish in very lovely shells - rapana. *They are quite nasty fellows I have learned. By then the view was obscured by clouds. It didn't clear up until we were coming back down.
We drove back to Sochi and then visited the Coastal Cluster where skating and hockey competition took place in various arenas. The iceberg building for the skating is still there. Another arena has been turned into a venue for formula car racing. Several other arenas have been taken down and moved to other cities in Russia. That seems like a very nice idea - to share the wealth. We did our tour in one of those open-sided electric cars, like a big golf cart.
After this we visited one of Stalin's 5 dachas - the one on a mountainside above Sochi. Stalin wanted it painted chick-pea green so it could not be easily seen among the trees. The house is built of wood and plaster maybe - with no nails - as directed by Stalin. We saw one of his little cots - he would move around from room to room so that people would not know where he was. He did not want any carpets on the floor so that he could hear footsteps. He liked the dacha darkened by curtains because light hurt his eyes. He had a swimming pool but no one was allowed to see him swim because he was sensitive about various imperfections in his body - his limp et al.
The dacha was a huge, two story building in a U-shape. There was no kitchen because he couldn't stand the smell of food cooking and he had his food brought in. I forgot from where. I think there was some out-building on the property. Khrushchev hated Stalin and did not use his dachas. This one was empty for 30 years. Also, Stalin had real paintings removed and replaced by copies with the originals sent to museums because he said he couldn't tell copies from originals. Maybe that was his one positive trait. Rami was obsessed with using Stalin's toilet and had photos taken of the toilet and one photo of him and the toilet together (but not using it).
After the dacha, we drove the rest of the way to the beach area and took a relatively long walk to our restaurant for dinner along the "boardwalk" with all the typical shops, restaurants, etc. of a beach town. We sat on the outdoor patio area with a view of the Black Sea and a sunset just as we left. This meal was a bit more chaotic, it seemed to take a lot longer for our food to arrive. Some things came, but others didn't, like the eggplant dish. The restaurant had a great menu so it was hard to decide - I ended up with pelmeni (Siberian dumplings) and a salad. The salad had a wonderful dressing and the pelmeni had a fig preserve. Michel was a bit put out by the loud music of the band which played a lot of rock and roll oldies. I had a local Belgian style lager. It was OK - not my favorite though.
Most of us were pretty tired by dinner's end. We had a drive of at least a half hour to our hotel in Adler, final instructions from Michel, and we were off to prepare and get some rest for another full day tomorrow, but with less walking planned.
* Rapana
venosa, veined Rapa whelk Rapana invasion in
1947. Small-sized Rapana drill bivalvian shells with
its radula, inject digestive enzymes
inside, and then suck the digested flesh out; they even
do the same to crabs! Adult Rapanas just open bivalves
with their large versatile leg. There are no predators
for adult Rapana venosain the Black
Sea. The starfish that normally prey on
this gastropod can't tolerate the low salinity of the
Black Sea. http://blacksea-education.ru/mollusca.shtml
2025-05-22