Alupka is one of the most famous Crimean resorts in the post-Soviet space, mainly due to its budget and special spirit, completely devoid of elitism. A small not even a city – a village with less than 10 thousand inhabitants – attracts tourists with a mild climate, lush subtropical vegetation and magic that is in the air on velvety nights (this is an exceptional specialty of the South Coast, in other places simply can not be found). However, despite its popularity, it is still greatly underrated.
Alupka began to develop as a resort in tsarist times, but after the revolution, in the 20s, the recovery of the working class was put on stream: the new government expropriated buildings and equipment from the fleeing rich people, and opened two dozen health resorts on the resulting base.
The main profile of balneological institutions of Alupka has always been respiratory diseases. Infrastructure, including sanatoriums and rest homes, is literally sharpened for the rehabilitation of weakened adults and children with sick lungs, so since Soviet times they have been going here to improve their health after prolonged pneumonia and bronchitis.
To improve your health, breathe in the healing Crimean air and walk along the wild Alupka beaches, generously sprinkled with sand and algae, it is not necessary to buy full board in a sanatorium. Unfortunately, many of them are frankly outdated, so connoisseurs of comfort are better off staying in hotels. A small hotel “Alupka” is a good option for unpretentious tourists who want to save money and will come to the room only to sleep. It is worth perceiving it as a budget hostel “bed and breakfast”, and not to make too high demands.
History and location
Before the people on the site of the current curves and mountainous streets of Alupka lived foxes. And there were so many of them that the alien Greek colonizers, and behind them the cunning merchants-Genoese, without collusion, named a small strategic settlement on the warm shore of Pontus Euxinus in their honor. History remembers that earlier Alupka was the Greek colony of Alepochori (a nation village) and the Genoese stronghold of Lupiko (a sea hole). The modern toponym – Alupka – is repeatedly adapted to the languages of local residents already primitivized Greek name Alopeka (Alobeka, Alubika).
The city of Alupka is part of the continuous, stretched along the South Coast of the Yalta agglomeration, it is located just between Koreiz and Semeiz a few kilometers from the Swallow’s Nest and 17 from Yalta. With the transport infrastructure in the Crimea problem, so the place will have to get a taxi, public or private transport. For guests by car, the hotel offers a 5-bed parking in front of the windows. However, it is citywide, and everyone can leave the car there – there are no special rights for residents.
Hotel “Alupka” is located quite successfully, on Frunze Street – almost in the heart of the city, just a couple of hundred meters from the sea. But do not forget that all the resort towns on the South Coast are narrow streets that hang over the windows over the roadway. The main value here is square meters, so the density of buildings is impressive and very frightening for those suffering from claustrophobia. So with Frunze Street, Tetris-like built up cafes, souvenir shops, kebabs, excursion bureaus, saunas and a variety of hotels, not exceeding three stars.
These are the numbers.
Hotel “Alupka” – really budget, the audience there is different, but the administration and staff do everything in their power to ensure that the stay of each guest was at least tolerable. Guests are offered four categories of rooms:
- Economy: one-room rooms of 15 square meters. meters.
- Standard: one-room double rooms, double or twin beds.
- Junior Suite: one room with a large balcony to the south, beds to choose from.
- Suite: three-room suite with two bedrooms and a terrace overlooking the sea. The living room has a sofa.
In each room the administration promises all amenities (shower, toilet, sink), air conditioning, cable TV. Some rooms have a minibar and an electric kettle. In fact, there are economy rooms with amenities on the floor, without air conditioning and hot water. Refrigerators are not provided in any rooms in the rooms.
In total, the hotel “Alupka” has two buildings, in one there are rooms of the lower (economy) category, in the second – all the rest. The economy building overlooks the roadway, therefore, according to reviews, it is almost impossible to sleep there: with open windows, sleep is disturbed around the clock by plying motorcycles and screaming summer areas of nearby cafes. With closed will be even worse, as air conditioning is not in every room, and the floor fan with the Crimean stuffy can not cope.
Olga, Murom: “We first moved into a small inexpensive room, but we could not sleep there from the word at all – noise from the street and insects, there is no mosquito net. I had to negotiate with the administration and move to another building, in the Standard room. It’s better, but I thought it was more dirty. Mold in the bathroom, and in general the shouldiness is terrible. Towels we have never changed, about the bed I am silent. The price, of course, is low. If we come again, we will choose something from the luxury category, although it is much more expensive there. They say the best suites on the third floor.”
Note! The rooms are cleaned daily, but the bed and towels are changed once a week or five days. Towels provided by the hotel, small and poor quality, it is desirable to have your own, so it will be easier to survive.
What’s with food
The room price includes breakfast (standard time, from 8 to 10.30 and not a minute later), it is served in the hotel cafeteria. All without frills, simple and almost homely without a choice: porridge (sometimes milk and on water), casseroles, sandwiches, sausages, occasionally pancakes. Serve packaged nevazhnetsk tea and a pretty nasty instant coffee, milk to which is not supposed to. Belly festival in all other hours in the same oasis of catering you need to pay extra: from 13.00 to 16.00 serve complex lunches, after 18.00 – dinner on the full menu. Already they can be ordered in the room, but guests rarely use this service, and in general somehow do not appreciate the talent of the local cook.
In the rooms there is no possibility to store and cook food, so to eat slowly at night bought in the supermarket snack will not work. You need to look for a place where you can eat without risk to health. In Alupka such meet.
Very interesting and even tasty you can go to:
- Caramba Bar, considered by many to be Alupka’s main restaurant, is 50 metres away. It serves popular dishes from pizza and rolls to fried fish, the prices are high, and the quality is acceptable.
- Etno Kaffe Roomi (Crimean Tatar cuisine), which is located on the parallel Frunze Street Rosa Luxemburg and works only in the tourist season (closed from the beginning of October to the end of April). Alcohol is not served.
- Tamer (Lebanese cuisine), a hundred meters along frunze. Here you can try real coffee in a Turk, yantsyk and, if the cook is in a good mood, then a very decent falafel. Alcohol is not served.
- Kakheti on yuzhnoberezhnoe highway is a classic Georgian cuisine in an ordinary-looking roadside café. Georgian wine is served here and excellent khinkali is made, but the menu is very small.
- Kalinka at the exit from the Vorontsov Park is suitable for everyone who is nostalgic for the Soviet catering. The first, the second with a side dish and compotic – everything is edible and safe, the main thing is not to take meat and fish.
A common problem for all cafes and restaurants of Alupka, which is better to put up with an ordinary tourist – the staff. Bills need to be recalculated, and proceed to the meal after a thorough study of the dish brought. Do not think that this will cause rejection, on the contrary. Just such vacationers who do not allow themselves to be deceived, the locals are a little respected and afraid. Naive and gullible on the South Coast are not considered people, so they feed them everything that is piled up.
Hint: Super budget solution – kefir and cookies from the supermarket (after all, Alupka is a city, there are all conditions for the life of natives, including inexpensive grocery chains, you just need to find them). But you should not trust the local markets, it is much easier to poison with chemical fruits and berries than it seems. Crimea in the summer is a kingdom of food poisoning, and this is not a joke.
What to do and where to go
Hotel “Alupka” is actually a hostel, it is designed only for overnight stays and half-asleep unpretentious breakfast. You can sit in the room all day, but it is unpleasant, and from entertainment – a wretched choice of channels via cable and lame WiFi. There is no additional entertainment in the hotel. Yes, even saunas, which for Alupka is just a sensation.
Alupka, let’s be honest, the town is boring, languorous and warmed up in the sun. You need to be ready to rest here exclusively according to the local scenario, put on repeat: woke up, ate – on the beach. Burned and tanned, spent money, ate, asleep.
There is no developed tourist infrastructure in Alupka and, apparently, never will be. Even in the high season in the cinema spin movies with a young Van Damme, on fences and kiosks hang posters about megaconcerts of stars from the 80s, in cafes spin “Tender May” and the group “Freestyle”, and Scriptonite is considered the Antichrist.
Still, be sure to visit:
- Vorontsov Palace with an adjacent park, it is better to allocate at least a week for this;
- arkhip Kuindzhi’s apartment-museum on Rosa Luxemburg;
- the temple of the Archangel Michael, which is located on a hill, from which stunning views open;
- Alupka-Isar or Mount Krestovaya with a height of 462 meters is located just outside the city limits. On it you can make a mini-climb along a fairly wide trampled path. You will need good shoes, repellents, water and hats.
Maria, Moscow: “It is worth coming to Alupka only for the sake of Alupka or Vorontsov Park. It is magnificent and not too intrusive, it is easier to breathe in than in any other landscape park of the Crimea or even Sochi. The very principle of its design and the selection of the collection – everything is natural and grandiose, I assure you as a designer. “
Beaches and surprises
The hotel “Alupka” has no private beach, not the same format. However, no one promised, and in Alupka there are enough free places where you can enjoy the sea enough. However, there are nuances that every vacationer should know: seal rest on the beaches of Alupka will not work. Do not be surprised, just the coast in this beautiful place is special and soak up the sand will not work.
The coastal strip here is narrow and rocky, so you have to be content with a strip of land by the sea. And where it is wider, and more people. In general, as always in the Crimea.
Beaches of Alupka, where you can go for free sunbathing:
- Children’s: the most famous and convenient beach in the city, ennobled, with a complex relief from stones and concrete slabs to sand and small pebbles. Very lively place.
- City, aka Central, aka Vorontsov baths – a small breakwater divided in two and a very narrow beach, where all tourists go. Here they sell baklava and lead between the carcasses of resting monkeys, indulging everyone who wants to be photographed with them.
- Frog – the beach near the tuberculosis sanatorium them. Beaver next to a large stone of a specific shape. A narrow strip of small pebbles and slippery stones on the sides.
- Dusia is a wild pebble beach in a semi-gorge between the rocks with absolutely stunning views. There are rarely people here, and in vain, here is the cleanest sea.
- Black Hill or Rainbow is the best Alupka beach in the depths of the bay, slightly ennobled and the widest of the free. Fine pebbles and partly sand.
In general, Alupka differs from other cities of the South Coast by the presence of closed zones on the coast, where ordinary vacationers are not allowed. Nevertheless, here while the demand is not beaten in the nose, so you can safely approach the protection and be interested. What if we can agree? Closed beaches in Alupka are three orders of magnitude better (in the sense, cleaner, wider and quieter) free.
If you need to stay with children
Hotel “Alupka” accepts guests with children, but does not create any special conditions for them. If a child under 5 years old does not need an extra bed and is content with beds that are already in the room, then you do not need to pay extra for it, but he will not receive breakfast. If you consider that sleeping in rooms of lower categories can be another test, then for an overnight stay with a child it is better to choose at least a junior suite. For young children, open terraces are frankly dangerous, and the hotel, of course, does not provide babysitting or animator services even in high season.
Children’s menu from the local cafeteria can not wait. Breakfast, in principle, can be suitable for a child, especially casserole or cheesecakes. However, they happen unpredictably sporadically, so you should not count on a miracle.
It is possible to stay with a child, and even more so children in the hotel “Alupka”, but all the difficulties of living and settling will be on the accompanying persons. To somehow facilitate them, it is better to take a number of a higher category.
What to see nearby
Alupka is in the heart of the South Coast, this is her main advantage. Very close to the magnificent Yalta, historical Livadia and Mount Ai-Petri with funiculars and karst caves. If you have no strength left to look at the history and nature, you can visit the water park “Blue Bay” in Simeiz. It’s not far away, and the kids love it there.
In principle, the whole Crimea is not so great, and the hotel number can be used as a transshipment base, traveling and getting acquainted with the sights both on foot and by car or even entrusting your life to the local bus service.
Hotel “Alupka” in the Crimea is a normal inexpensive place for those who need a decent overnight stay: clean sheets, hot water and an edible breakfast – this is almost good in our difficult time. It’s rarely full, even in high season, so at least you can keep it in mind on the pick-up. A convenient location and staff who quickly solve problems is another important plus that ensures that the rest will not be a test, no matter how the wheel of Fortune turnes.
