Highlights of Chisinau Day Tour

About Tour

Chisinau is the capital of the Republic of Moldova. It is a city full of magic that hides more curiosities. So many generations have contributed to its development, so that it now becomes what it is. For the first time the name "Chisinau" is dated July 17, 1436. Chisinau receives the status of city in 1812 (population 7 thousand people) and becomes the administrative center (capital) of Bessarabia region in 1818, having 18 thousand people. Today, this is the home of more than 800,000 citizens.

The first urban transport was the horse-drawn tram, which appeared in 1878, and the first electric trams appeared in 1912. Chisinau has a motocross route. In 1969 the World Motocross Championship was held here. 

In the Soviet period, food for cosmonauts was produced in Chisinau: 20 types of juices, 15 types of fruit sticks with different flavors, fruit peels and vegetables. Today, the municipality of Chisinau generates about 60% of Moldova's GDP! Chisinau ranks 16th in the world in terms of Internet speed with 21.02 Mbps and 47th in the top 100 major cities in Europe.

Chisinau is in the Top 20 the greenest capital of Europe. The city of Chisinau is located on seven hills in the shape of a circle. In Chisinau there are 300 monuments, busts and commemorative plaques. One of the smallest monuments in the world is in Chisinau: the bronze figurine of the Little Prince in Valea Morilor Park - 11 cm. Saint Lazarus Cemetery in Chisinau is the largest surface cemetery in Europe. According to estimates, it has almost two million square meters.

"The city of white stone" is the other way that is called Chisinau. The respective nickname comes from the abundance of the buildings built of white limestone. In Chisinau there are 149 primary, secondary and high schools, 29 secondary and post-secondary technical vocational education institutions, 25 universities, 49 public libraries, 25 cultural houses, 17 theaters (professional), 543 sports buildings (Stadiums, gyms, swimming pools, etc.), Museums (including branches).

Want to know as much details, statistics and facts about this wonderful city? Then book this tour! 

1 st Day

Highlights of Chisinau

Included highlights:

Start the day with a visit (no tasting) to Milestii Mici Underground Wine City, mentioned also in the Guinness Book of Records for having the biggest wine collection in the world. The length of this underground winery is 200 km at a depth of 40-85 meters. The constant temperature of 12-14ºC and the humidity of 85-95 % of this „kingdom of wine" ideally contribute to the full revelation of natural characteristics of elite wines. 

Next let's have fun while discovering the downtown of Chisinau!! We will not only learn about history and architecture of the city but also sample some excellent wines produced by small Moldovan wineries. 

We will see: The Ethnography Museum, The Nativity Cathedral, the Arch of Triumph, the Park of Steven the Great with monuments, the City Hall, Souvenirs Market, Central Post Office, the Government building, the Parliament and other administrative buildings of the downtown. 

At the end of the tour we will stop to a local Wine Bar where we will try 3 types of local wines accompanied by the traditional Moldovan Pie – “Placinta”. 

 

What People Say

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Victoria, Just a short note to say thank you very much for everything on Sunday. Despite the long and tiring journey caused by the road closure in Ukraine, we thoroughly enjoyed our day, and learned so much about Moldova, Transnistria and Ukraine. We particularly enjoyed discovering Tiraspol, as it's such an unusual place and gave us a glimpse of how life was under the former Soviet regime. Because British history is relatively simple, with few invasions and no changes of borders, we struggle to understand the complexities of European history. 

We were very impressed with your understanding - and with your excellent English language skills in explaining it all to us. It certainly brought to life our visit to your country. I hope your journey back home was a little easier than the one to Odessa. Please give our thanks to our driver on the day - I'm afraid we do not recall his name but we appreciated all he did to negotiate the way through the border crossings for us and to get us to Odessa as quickly as he did despite the obstacles. Good luck for future success in your career. If you are ever in England and are able to visit our area, do not hesitate to give us a call. We could show you the historic city of Winchester and the busy port and waterside areas of Portsmouth, which I'm sure you would find interesting. Thanks again for everything.

Dear Victoria!

There are not enough adjectives in the world to describe adeguately the experience of doing a visit with you! You certainly have enhanced my appreciation of your country. I learnt a lot from you on many different levels. Your organizational skills are extraordinary and Explore will definitely receive extremely positive feedback. We were very lucky to have you with us during this short trip.

Thank you once again for all you did so beautifully with grace, humor and smile. I wish you all and only the very best for now and for the future. 

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 .