Great Tour With Great People! - The tour was convenient and well run. They arrived on time to pick us up from our hotel and the trip was comfortable and easy. Our tour guide was very pleasant, informative and let us dictate the pace of the trip.

The Best - We made the best tour choice! our guide Taner is exceptional! We had an incredible day and an excellent lesson on the history of Trabzon. We will definitely go back and do other tours with him, he offers a range of tours with affordable prices and memorable places! Thank you very much for everything and thank you tripadviser for putting them on the tourism route here! Furthermore, the car was extremely clean and the driver was very polite, everything was perfect! Fizemos a melhor escolha de passeio! nosso guia Taner é excepcional! Tivemos um dia incrível e uma excelente lição sobre a história de Trabzon. Com certeza voltaremos e faremos outros passeios com ele, ele oferece uma variedade de passeios com preços acessíveis e lugares memoráveis! Muito obrigado por tudo e obrigado tripadviser por colocá-los na rota turística aqui! Além disso, o carro estava extremamente limpo e o motorista muito educado, tudo perfeito!

Wonderful tour! Was a... - Wonderful tour! Was a smooth ride with great sites. We were surprised how many amazing sites we were able to see on the tour. Our tour guide Samil was very knowledgeable, spoke English very well, fun, and chose great stops and restaurants for us. Such a great tour and experience, highly recommend going on this tour. 10 out of 10.

Historical locations. Beutiful viewpoints. Friendly staff. - Me and my girlfriend enjoyed the trip so much! Bus was very clean. Driver was chilled and calm. Tour guide Iram was very friendly, spoke very good english, showed us many hidden locations and told us the story behind each one. The weather was not on pur side, a bit unlucky sumela was not crowded., but overall It was a nice experience for us ✌️

Well organised, excellent English and driving and great value - This trip was organised by Zenofon Tours through Viator and right from the start was impressive. The driver - Hussein I think - was excellent, very mellow and safe and not at all like some other tour drivers we have had. The guide, being a useless idiot I don't remember his name, but he was excellent throughout - very informative and well organised. I particularly liked the fact that he gave all the information for the sights while we were on the coach so our time at each place was completely our own. First stop was the reason we visited Trabzon - Sumela Monastery. This was one of the first monasteries built after the Christianisation of the empire and has had a bit if a rough life before now being slowly restored. What we saw on our visit was about 10% of the original monastery. A lot burned down after a fire in the nineteenth century but the monastery was so large and important it actually continued in use right up until the expulsion of the Greeks in 1923, nearly 500 years after the Ottoman conquest. The last part of the drive was quite a windy road but it was all well sign posted and there was a large car park. We had to change from our minibus to a smaller vehicle for the last 500m of the trip although some foolish individuals were actually walking it to save the 40 lire (about £1.10) fee. That was on top of the 450 lire entrance fee (about £14). The monastery was situated on the side of a mountain, surrounded by steeply wooded hills and was an incredibly picturesque setting. There were lots of small rooms with various uses - library, student rooms, priest rooms etc and these were mostly plain rooms with a couple of niches and a fireplace. Several had faded frescoes too. The main attraction, other than the setting itself, is the chapel (I guess~) which is like the painted monasteries of Romania and completely covered in frescoes. Sadly these had been severely vandalised in recent years with faces scratched off and generally defaced. We had a good explore and then sat at the cafe for the obligatory coffee and cake before returning to the minibus. The area is very mountainous and lots of tunnels have been built recently to make the roads passable in winter and generally quicker and safer. We went through the Zigana tunnel - 14km long - and then climbed up the mountainside again to the Karaca Caves. These were only opened to the public 30 years ago and are very well organised with guided walkways and lighting. The stalactites and mites were impressive and there was one formations that just looked like a bale of loose silk, quite amazingly beautiful. We had a lunchtime cheese and spinach crepe at one of the eateries leading up to the caves which was a bargain at less than £2 and a wonderful view over the hills. Our tour continued to the town of Torul, one of the first Ottoman conquests in the region and the site of a small Genoese castle, built to defend the Silk Road pass near the town. The other attraction was a glass viewing platform that some sadist had built at the summit of the hill! I did very carefully edge about half way along it to get some pictures but when some gargantuan jabberwocky decided it would be fun to jump up and down on it I left. It did look impressive though, from elsewhere! We had a brief photo stop at the summit of the Zigana Pass, one of the original Silk Road routes into Iran and 2050m high. I can imagine it is completely cut off for most of the year and it had that kind of isolated feel to it. Our last stop was the five villages that make up Hamiskoy. I think this was a bit of a commission boost for the tour guys as it wasn't that appealing a place, was quite a big diversion and we also had as long there as we did at the monastery. Nat and I had Sutlaci, a kind of rice pudding, which was ok but nothing special. The weather by now (5PM) was getting cold and starting to drizzle so we headed back to Trabzon. Both Nat and I fell asleep so that made the journey quicker! A lovely trip and very well done and we were dropped back at our hotel.

Great guide wonderful experience - Guide was amazing you could tell he lived for his job. That is already half the experience. But the monastery was gorgeous still can’t comprehend how they build it without modern technology

plenty of beautiful scenery - Guide was very friendly and informative. Scenery was beautiful. We just wish lunch was earlier in the trip and not at the very end. Highly recommend overall

Beyond your imagination - One of the most interesting places on earth. Highly recommended to visit in the Summer. Grab a jacket or other warm cloth because it will be cold.

Off season tour - Very accommodating tour guide Irem. This is a good deal for people wishing to learn about the area and/or who want insight into the regional culture

Lets be realistic! - It is located in Trabzon, Macka There are three bus stops, the best is to go to the end where parking lot and rest rooms are. One way ticket is 30TLs and round trip one is 40TLs. The best is going in the morning, visiting and walking down back. Hence, one way could be adequate as walking back down provides a wonderful experience for the visitor. site is not that much gorgeous! Until writing this review, I have seen that people of this country highly exaggerate about their country's attractions. By the way, one horrible thing is that the walls and paintings are touched mostly by local/native residents. Abstaining from doing it is highly appreciated, although staying away from pointing out them as the reaction would be a bit harsh! I found whole Trabzon more expensive than Istanbul with lower quality. Nutritional ones, souvenirs and else are really exuberant! Magnets were twice more than Istanbul. Food was more expensive than Istanbul. Lack of English speaking is prevalent. Turkce lazim.