Sochi prepares for an influx of football fans
(7 Jun 2018) LEADIN:
The Black Sea resort of Sochi sees Russia take on Croatia 7 July.
Sochi rose to global prominence in 2014 when it held the Winter Olympics and it's now a popular tourist destination wiht its glitzy bars and high end restaurants.
STORYLINE:
Visiting Sochi is a mouthwatering prospect for World Cup fans, with beaches and blue skies.
It hosted the 2014 Winter Olympics and is a top Russian tourist destination.
The legacy of the estimated US$50 billion spent on those Sochi Games is a variety of tourist options.
Fans can relax in the beach bars of Adler, a town near the stadium, or hike in the mountains above the city.
Ahead of the World Cup, the Sochi Dolphinarium prepared a football show in which the dolphins play football with a sea lion.
The sea lion acts as a goal keeper and kicks away the ball which the dolphins throw at it.
"Sometimes it seems that they play better than some of the human football players," says dolphin trainer Svyatoslav Gundarenko.
The Sochi dolphinarium, situated in downtown Sochi, is the biggest in Eastern Europe.
It opened in 2012 in one of the Sochi's oldest amusement parks "Rivyera".
There are 7 bottlenose dolphins, native to the Black Sea, two white whales and sea lions. According to Gundarenko, the dolphins here were born in captivity as Russia banned the dolphin hunt in 2003.
With its sub-tropical climate, Sochi has hot humid summers and mild often snowless winters and is widely known as a beach destination.
Numerous cafes and restaurants line the beach promenades. Royal Fish is an Italian and Mediterranean cuisine restaurant where chef Davido Corso uses fresh local products to create high quality dishes.
The restaurant has a terrace overlooking the sea.
Local tourist firms offer Sochi visitors guided tours to the Olympic village, ski-resort Rosa Khutor as well as hikes to Sochi's picturesque mountains, caves and waterfalls.
Sochi is also home to UNESCO heritage colchic forests that survived the ice age.
In 2016-2017, 6.5 million people visited Sochi making it the top tourist destination in Russia, ahead of traditional leader St. Petersburg.
On average, Sochi accommodates four to five million people a year.
Rosa Khutor, Sochi's Olympic heritage ski-resort, is one of the most popular destinations. Imitating European ski-resorts, it has numerous restaurants and cantinas.
Che Kharcho is a restaurant serving local Caucasian cuisine which is well known and very popular all around Russia. It includes traditional dishes from neighboring Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Russia's North Caucasus republics and is heavily based on Middle Eastern cuisine.
"Che Kharcho is a home food restaurant, we offer to our guests home food, we cook food the way it's cooked at home, so we based our menu on the most simple products," says restaurant chef, Yevgeny Kochetkov.
With 600,000 people, Sochi is a vibrant city with charged nightlife. Cocos' bar tender Anton Belash says his venue was the first cocktail bar in the city.
They take traditional recipes and rethink them with local spirits such as Georgian vodka and local fruits and herbs such as feijoa and tarragon.
"There is a wonderful classic cocktail called the Moscow Mule. It's vodka with ginger beer or lemonade. For the Caucasus Mule, we take all fresh ingredients, we make everything from scratch. The Caucasian Mule is a mix of chacha (Georgian vodka), fresh ginger, lemon juice and fructose syrup - we're all for the healthy lifestyle - and sparkling water. It's very good. I recommend it." says Belash.
GQ Russia included Cocos in its top 10 bars in Russia list in 2017.
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