Day 26: Ferry from Trabzon (Turkey) to Sochi (Russia) through the Black Sea

We woke up praying to Shiv that the ferry does leave today. We were still not sure because we had no tickets, not even sure if there was any ferry leaving today! All we had was on contact whom Aarti was in touch with over the email and an address he gave us to come over once in Trabzon, around 9 AM. There is no point worrying on an empty stomach, so we treated ourselves to the breakfast that Novatel was serving.

Moment of truth was finally here i.e. 9 AM, so we put everything in the car and started towards the address we had from the email. It was pretty close to the harbor and 10 minutes drive from the hotel. So, here we were in front of the address which would tell us if the ferry was on schedule or not. Both of us parked the car and walked into the shop, and were greeting by the gentleman who was in touch with us over emails. That gave us some confidence and soon he introduced us to the Captain of the ship as well. All was going well and then he inquired us about who all were traveling and about the car, they told us the fare and it all came down to $800.00 including a cabin for 2 individuals and parking space for the car. However, the Captain was still not sure if the ferry would leave the shore as they would wait for a certain number of passenger before making a decision.

So, the ferry leaves every 2 weeks on a Wednesday, and their sales office in Trabzon is located at Alfa Gate (A Gate) of the Port (Google Map URL)

Email: info@pirireisshipping.com
Contact: Bahadir
Mobile: +90 543 894 1461 (International Call)
0543 894 1461 (Domestic Call)

Passenger Ticket: $120.00 for Seat & $150.00 for Cabin
Car Ticket: $500.00

Their Sochi office is located at:

Sochi-Kiyitour
Kurortniy Prospekt St. 50 Htl.
Sochi Floo – 3
Telephone: 609702, 620221

Their headoffice is in Athens, Greece:

Ruzvelt 18120 Koridalos,
Athens, Greece

They told us to come back around noon, we were a little relaxed now and thought of grabbing a quick lunch in a nearby mall and kill some time as well while we were at it.

We found a restaurant serving food similar to Subway, i dint like it much but there were not many options so we were just glad that we ate something familiar 🙂

It was almost noon, so we headed back to the harbor. We parked the car close to the ferry, did final checks in terms of what stuff we needed to keep out and what stuff in the car. Finally we got the news that the Captain has given a go ahead to the scheduled departure, we both were elated. Our journey had been trouble free ever since we left London and we glad that things had been working out, sometimes at the last moment but no complaints as long as it works 😉

Aarti is the registered owner of the car, so she was asked to park the car inside the ferry. It was not as straight forward as car was supposed to be taken inside in reverse gear :-p

Finally she did it and stared checking out the ferry. I was still out and waiting for to clear the passport control. It was almost evening but we were glad that we dint had to cut short our journey and go back to London. Eventually, all passengers boarded the ferry and ferry left the port. We checked into our cabin which had stacked beds, and it was not bad.

I decided to get some stuff out of the car and was surprised to notice that cars safety alarm was on. I switched it off, took my stuff and came back up. I however, had this intuition and went back to check again and it was on again! My guess is that the alarm was going off because car’s sensor was experiencing movement even though the car was locked. So, i disconnected the battery and locked the car as dead battery in the morning was the last thing we would want.

We were carrying some fruit for the journey, so we had some of it, enjoyed the view from our cabin window and decided to sleep off as we were going to dock early in the morning at Sochi port. We were really excited to be in Russia finally 🙂