Daily Rize City Tour – Rize Castle, Tea Gardens & Borcka Karagol Lake

Daily Rize City Tour – Tea Culture, Mountain Passes and Karagöl Lake

This guided day tour from Rize blends the city's history and famous tea culture with a high-mountain lake walk across the border in Artvin, with hotel transfers and lunch included. It is a relaxed full-day excursion for anyone who wants to see both the green slopes above the Black Sea coast and the forested highlands that make this corner of Turkey so special.

The morning starts in Rize itself. At Rize Castle, a fortress whose origins reach back to the Byzantine era, you climb up for a wide view over the rooftops, the harbour and the surrounding mountains. The Ziraat Botanical Tea Garden follows, a peaceful terraced park among tea bushes where you learn how the region's renowned black tea is grown and processed and can sip a glass while enjoying the scenery and the local flora.

From the coast the road heads east into the mountains. Before lunch you stop at the Cankurtaran Pass for photographs of deep valleys and layered ridges, then continue to Borçka Karagöl, a natural lake set at about 1,480 metres in a nature park of spruce and beech forest. A gentle walk of roughly 45 minutes leads along the lakeshore, followed by free time for pictures and simply enjoying the quiet. During the day you can also try regional dishes such as mıhlama, a rich cornmeal and cheese speciality, or fresh trout. In the late afternoon you are driven back to your hotel in Rize, making this Black Sea daily excursion an easy way to combine culture and nature in one day.