Goodbye, Georgia

Last night, after leaving the Internet cafe we stopped at a Japanese restaurant nearby for some excellent sushi. Then we took the metro back to our hotel, took nice long hot showers and fell fast asleep. Last night in Georgia.

This morning we woke up around 9 and started packing slowly. We had a lot of work, to make sure our wine bottles are properly wrapped and padded in all our clothes. Breakfast in bed: cornflakes in Nesquik spread. At noon we checked out and left our backpacks at reception.

We crossed the metekhi Bridge and walked through the alleys of old Tbilisi, which are sort of Tbilisi's version of shenkin nowadays, towards Liberty Square. We passed on the way through several landmarks and restaurants we've been to a month ago, so it was very nostalgic. At a bakery, we bought one khachapuri guruli and one with mushrooms, both were great.

We went to the tourist info center at the museum to check how we can get to the airport today, and then walked through 9 April Park to the market on the dry bridge to buy some souvenirs. We continued buying some more in one of the underground passages under Rustaveli, and at the big square at the other end of Rustaveli.

After we finished, we sat down for one final lunch at the same restaurant where we had our first, for a really excellent (and very cheap) meal. Khinkali with mashed potatoes, and with mushrooms, and an awesome bean stew in clay jar, and the biggest surprise of all: cream-flavoured soda (or as they call it, "lemonade". They haven't really grasped the meaning of the word). Now we're at the Internet cafe again, and I guess we'll head to the hotel from here to pick up our bags and head to the airport. Tomorrow I'm going to the kinneret.

That's all for now, folks. Until next time, that is.

Sulfur

We woke up this morning, packed, and had cereal for breakfast. We payed Maia and said goodbye, and around 8:45 we got out of the house and waited for Gela. He showed up a few minutes later with Helmut and Astrid already in the vehicle, and drove us to the bus station. At the bus station we ran into a small problem - there was only one marshutka heading to Tbilisi at 9, and it was full. Next one wasn't till 11. We weren't the only ones stuck (there was another older Israeli couple, Dorit and Reuven), and Gela started yelling at the station manager to send out another marshutka, but when that failed, he stormed back into the car angrily and told us to hop back on, mumbling out "degenerats". He drove like crazy to another nearby town, while talking on the phone with a friend of his who's a marshutka driver, and then he stopped in the middle of the road and in less than a minute his friend showed up with his empty yellow marshutka, and we loaded our backpacks. We thanked Gela warmly for all his help, and left on our final marshutka ride in Georgia with our new Austrian friends.

We arrived back in Tbilisi's Samgori station around 11, I think, and headed straight to the metro. Helmut and Astrid were heading to Kazbegi so they were riding across Tbilisi to Didube station, while we only rode a few stops to Avlabari, following a hotel recommendation from Astrid (our hostel booking on Rustaveli fell through. Avlabari is a section of Tbilisi we haven't been to yet, and it's much closer to the old city, so we agreed in advance to try it out first and check some hotels, with 90 lari per room being the maximum price we're willing to pay). When we arrived at our stop we said goodbye to Astrid and Helmut and got up to leave, but the doors in the metro are a bit violent and faster than we remembered, and I ended up leaving the train alone, while Nitsan remained inside. I walked across to the other platform and waited no longer than 5 minutes I think, before the next metro arrived with Nitsan.

We finally left the station and started looking for the place we heard about, near Metekhi bridge. We asked a few people for directions, and they all pointed us in the same direction. They were all wrong, of course, and we ended up walking for about 25 minutes for what should've taken us 2 minutes, but never mind. The hotel in question (and all the others we passed by) were a tad more expensive than we were willing to pay, and we decided to give up and take the metro back to the area where we stayed last time. On our walk back to the station we passed by one last hotel, just across from the station, and decided to give it one last shot. The receptionist said 100 lari. Nitsan asked if there's anything cheaper, and suddenly there was another smaller room for 90 lari. We went up to see - ensuit bathroom, double bed and our first aircon in all of Georgia. We took it.

After some rest, we went to have lunch on the riverfront, and then we headed to the nearby area of Abanotubani. Abanotubani is famous for its sulfur baths, and is easily recognizable by the strange domes covering it, as the baths all lie underground beneath the domes. We went into one of the places, called "The Royal Baths". I must say, the sulfur baths is a serious competitor for the title of "strangest experience we've had in Georgia" (and my my, how many strangest experiences we had).

We were led to a private room, which was ours for an hour. It had a table and some couches, a small room with a toilet, and a door leading to another room - the sulfur bath itself. That room was insanely hot. Most of it was the big pool of steaming hot water (I have no idea how you're even supposed to go in without getting burns, we immediately turned down the temperature with a knob on the wall), and in the side there was ceramic massage table. My masseuse arrived first after about 10 minutes, a middle-aged Georgian man, and started my "massage". A Georgian massage is quite rough, but is really more like a scrub than a massage. It feels like they're cleaning you. In-between scrubs the guy poured buckets of hot water on me from the pool. It was very bizzare. After he left, a big old Georgian woman came to do the same to Nitsan. When our hour was up, we left and went back to the hotel, feeling quite numb.

We rested for a long time in the hotel, and only now dragged ourselves out and took the metro to Liberty Square to find the internet cafe we know on Rustaveli. I think we'll go eat dinner now, and tomorrow - goodbye Tbilisi, goodbye Georgia.

Wine, Wine, Wine

We woke up this morning around 8 or 9, and had cereal for breakfast. Gela came to pick us up in his marshutka at 10:50, and we went to their other house, where another Austrian couple is staying, who joined us for the day. Astrid and Helmut from Salzburg, currently living in Graz, very friendly and nice people who are just starting their trip. Also joining us for the day was a childhood friend of Gela, a woman named Marina, who has very good English and helped us communicate. We ate some more on the porch there - some bread with raspberry jam, watermelon jam, and tea. After that, we left on our tour of Kakheti.

We headed north through Gurjaani to a wine cellar in a small town called Velistsikhe. It was also part museum(ish), with a lot of cool artifacts from the 17th century (gramophone, grand piano, irons, backgammon set, traditional clothing, etc). After seeing everything and visiting the cellar, we also tasted our first wines of the day. We were invited to a small table with lots of grapes, bread and local cheese, and we each got a clay bowl (!) of white wine and a glass of red wine, plus a shot of chacha vodka. Quite a lot of alcohol for this hour, and we were already a bit lightheaded when leaving Velistsikhe.

From Velistsikhe we continued to the winery in Kvareli, where we saw some part of the wine making process, and tasted 4 glasses of wine each (two whites and two reds). In the end we also bought two bottles for ourselves. From Kvareli we drove on to Nekresi, where we left the marshutka on the parking lot, because only tourist vans that go up and down the hill can take people up to visit the ancient church. From there we carried on to another historical important church called Gremi, a last remainder of an ancient town by that name, which was apparently once a seat of kings.

We then drove through Telavi, the biggest town and center of Kakheti, where we didn't stop because we didn't have much time but we saw the house of king Erekle II. Our last stop of the day was in the winery of Tsinandali, where we visited the summer house of Alexander Chavchavadze, now a museum. Very nice and lots of cool artifacts. We also visited there the wine cellar, which houses wine bottles hundreds and hundreds of years old.

It was getting dark during our drive home - I think it was about 19:30 or later when we arrived back in Sighnaghi. It was a long day but we enjoyed it very much, and we had good company in Astrid and Helmut. We sat down for dinner with them at a restaurant Gela dropped us off in (we had ostri with bread and cheese khinkali, which was all very good). A young guy in the restaurant who had very good English helped us translate something to Gela, and afterwards he showed up with a large bag of nuts as a gift.

Tomorrow morning we'll take a marshutka back to Tbilisi for our last two days and one final night in Georgia. Astrid and Helmut are planning on catching the same marshutka (and then head to Kazbegi).

Caves Galore

Last night dinner: "Kakheti pizza" at the Amsterdam Cafe, with garlic and muscat. Night went mostly OK, except for one annoying rooster.

After Uplistsikhe and Vardzia, today was the turn of one last cave city/monastry complex, in the form of David Gareja, named after its founder, a king known as David the Builder, uncle of the famed Queen Tamar that Georgians so like to glorify. The only was to get there is with private transport as it's a bit secluded at the end of a bad road right on the border with Azerbaijan. Gela and Maia arranged for a taxi driver to pick us up from the house a little after 10, which gave us plenty of time in the morning to go buy bread at the supermarket and eat it with our chocolate spread and some tea Maia made for us.

The drive from Sighnaghi to David Gareja was about 1.5 hours through hilly landscape which is probably green in the winter, but is now yellow and arid, almost desert-like, and very beautiful. The monastry complex is quite huge, but only two sites are what attracts tourists: Lavra (which is where we were dropped off) and Udabno (which requires a long walk from Lavra). We started by exploring Lavra, which is a big walled area with a church and stairways carved through the mountain, and monks still live there - is small houses completely inside the cliff (it's quite amazing - doors and windows in the mountainside. I half-expected Hobbits to pop out any second). Near Lavra, a small narrow steep path climbs up to the watchtower, and from there there is a big circular route (I think it took us about 2.5 hours, since the entire visit was 3 hours) that climbs up the hill to a stone chapel and then goes down along a cliffside (not the hardest walk we've done in Georgia, but definitely the scariest) to Udabno - a set of caves carved into the cliff, with beautiful frescoes. We met there 3 Polish tourists, and walked around with them.

We were back at the car by 14:30, and headed back towards Sighnaghi. We stopped by the house to change out of our walking shoes and went straight out to find a place to eat. We found a nice little restaurant and had khachapuri mengruli and salad. On our way back, we stopped at a big supermarket and bought some milk and cereal for tomorrow.

Nitsan is in the shower now so I'm using the time to write - one of the last blog entries for this trip. Tomorrow, Sunday, we will take a wine tour through Kakheti. Monday we're back in Tbilisi, and Tuesday night we're back home.

Nesquik Fondue

After the Internet cafe yesterday we bought a juice box and sat on the beach for a while. We then walked on the esplanade back towards the homestay and took brief showers. While Nitsan was showering, I went to the living room to pay the guy, and he called his kid (Misha, I think) to help translate. We talked a little bit and he asked about where we've been.

After we finished packing we said goodbye to everybody (including Maya the neighbor) and walked away towards Chavchavadze street. On our way there we stopped at a minimarket to buy a loaf of bread and a jar of Nesquik chocolate spread. From Chavchavadze, we caught marshutka number 150 to Makhinjauri, about 5 km out of Batumi - the nearest train station. We had about an hour to spare before the train arrived, so we ate some bread dipped in chocolate and waited.

When the train arrived, we found our booth easily. This train was better than the previous one - a little fancier rooms and stuff. We left Makhinjauri at 22:50, and I think we locked the booth and went to sleep a little after Kobuleti, about 45 minutes later. In the meantime, we amused ourselves by reading the sign detailing all of the train's stops - in Georgian. It seems that without realizing it, we both picked up quite a lot of letters over the course of the month. Modern Georgian has no less than 33 letters, and we remember the vast majority of them. We can even write our names (Gal is გალ and Nitsan is ნიცან).

The night went OK. We woke up around 6:50 when we passed by Mtskheta, and arrived in Tbilisi around 7:25, on schedule. Our third and last time in the train station. After a short toilet break, we took the metro (we still had one ride each left on our card) to Samgori station. At Samgori there's a marshutka station, where we found a marshutka to Sighnaghi (the "gh" is pronounced sorta like an Israeli "R"), a small town in the Kakheti region. The driver told us he has a guesthouse in Sighnaghi, Hotel Maia, after his wife. He invited us to sit next to him during the ride (seat belts!!!), and during the wait we ate some more bread in Nesquik on the front seat. A woman walked by selling bananas, and we bought one, making our own fondue of banana in Nesquik.

The ride went smoothely through green hilly terrain, fitting to a wine region such as Kakheti. Sighnaghi had become somewhat of a tourist center for exploring Kakheti, the reason being that Sighnaghi has been largely renovated in 2007, and now looks like a big hilly fortified Zikhron Yaakov. Our driver dropped us off at his guesthouse up steep 9 April street, and we decided to stay. We went to walk around a little bit, and payed a visit to the tourist information center on the main square. After that, we decided to stay 3 nights in Sighnaghi and 1 in Tbilisi. We sat down for excellent Hawaiian pizza and Jaffa juice at the nearby Amsterdam cafe.

After that, we walked around Sighnaghi for a bit. We visited Dodashvili square and walked into the fortified walls to visit St George Church. From the church, a small path leads to a stairway onto the walls, and then there's a narrow walkway built onto the side of the walls. It was pretty cool but tiring, and quite full of wasps, so we walked to the end and back without many delays.

We are now back the guesthouse. We're a little tired so I don't think we'll do much more today. Tomorrow a taxi driver who's a friend of our host will take us to Davit Gareja monastery on the Azeri border (we planned to do it as a day trip from Tbilisi, but Sighnaghi is nicer and cheaper), and on Sunday our host will take us on a wine tour in the area of Kvareli and Telavi. Monday morning we'll head to Tbilisi. Tuesday? Goodbye, Georgia.

Last Days in Batumi

Tuesday night we walked back to the esplanade. but this time instead of turning right to the old city we turned left to the newer parts, reaching the colorful Dancing Fountains. We sat there for a while by the lake and then ate dinner at an Azeri restaurant on the waterfront (probably a former Asian restaurant, as the place looks like a pagoda). We then walked back through the big avenue leading up to a big arch called the "Gate to the Black Sea".

Yesterday, after breakfast (cereal) we found an Internet cafe near the park, and sat there to register to our uni classes. We left around noon and walked around the park and the lake for a while before returning to the homestay (on the way we had khachapuri guruli we bought through a window). We changed to bathing suits and headed to the beach, stopping for a big piece of banana cake on the way. We didn't really do much for the rest of the day other than hanging around the beach. At night we had dinner on Gorgalidze street, kebabs.

This morning we finished our cereal and half-packed our stuff, leaving the bags at the homestay. We walked to the info center on Rustaveli to see where we can catch the minibus to the botanical gardens, and then found minibus number 31 and hopped on.

Batumi's Botanical Gardens are about 9 km out of town, on a cliff overlooking the sea. They cover a pretty big area, but we only bothered seeing parts of it. It was around 3PM when we left the gardens back towards Batumi, and then sat down at the same restaurant as last night for some khachapuri. Now we're back at the Internet cafe nearby.

Tonight: night train back to Tbilisi, though we don't plan of seeing much of the city - we'll head straight to Sighnaghi when we arrive.

Esplanade

Last night we walked all of Rustaveli to the center, and had hamburgers on the esplanade. First time we wen't charged extra for ketchup. The center is very nice at night, it seems, and the fountains dance to classical music.

This morning we had Nesquik cereal here for breakfast, and then went out to the pebbly beach afterwards. We didn't really do much today- spent some time at the beach, some time on the esplanade, more time on the beach, lunch on the esplanade, more time on the beach...

Tomorrow if we'll feel like it we'll head to Sarpi after signing up to uni classes.

Black Sea, Black Sand, Blue Sky

We woke up at 9 today, and went out to have breakfast (khachapuri imeruli and salad) and to withdraw some cash from the ATM (should last till the end of our trip). Then we returned to the house, put on our bathing suits and walked down Pushkin street all the way to the bus station (about 15 minutes), to catch the marshutka to Ureki, a small coastal town about an hour's drive north of Batumi, in the region of Guria, which has a sandy beach (around here the beach is pebbly). And not just any sandy beach - magnetic black sand (which is apparently a little different from the volcanic black sand beaches I visited in New Zealand).

The marshutka dropped us off on the highway entance to Ureki, as usual, near the train station. About 5 other tourists also stopped there, and they spoke some Russian so they could communicate with the locals (I think they were Azeri, but I'm not sure). Our problem was that there was no way in sight to cross the railway to get to the beach (we later found the crossing on our way back about 500 meters away), but the locals at the station explained we could just walk across, as the trains aren't going to move anytime soon. So all 7 of us started crossing the railway by foot. On the last of the 3 railroads there was a very long train, so we basically crouched under it to get across.

From there we started walking on the road to the beach, and got on a marshutka to get us there. The beach was very beautiful and we had a very good time there for a few hours, before packing up and finding a place to eat nearby (mostly Western food). Then we started walking back until we caught a marshutka that took us across the railway to the highway. There we flagged a passing marshutka to Batumi and got on. At Tsikhisdziri we suddenly stopped at the sideline, as there was some problem in the engine. Another passenger flagged down another passing marshutka, and we hopped on with him (no one bothered paying the first guy, so we saved about 5 lari). This one dropped us off at the end of Chavchavadze street in Batumi, so we walked it all the way to our homestay. On the way, we stopped at a minimarket to buy some cereal and milk which should last for the next 3 mornings we have here in Batumi.

We're back at the homestay now, will probably head out later again. Tomorrow I think we'll pass another day at the beach, this time in Batumi. The day after tomorrow we'll spend our morning signing up to uni classes and maybe we'll head to Sarpi. Thursday we'll see more of the city and maybe head to the botanical gardens, and then we have our night train to Tbilisi. Kakheti still awaits our arrival.

Lazy Day in Batumi

We did go out for supper last night at the same place where we had lunch, despite being dead tired. So tired, that when we came back to the homestay we only rubbed on some mosquito repellent and went straight to bed.

This morning we only dragged ourselves out of bed round 10AM. We met the daughter of the family, Marie, who knows some English (Neta and Moran told us about her), and we explained to her that we need to do some laundry. We filled up the machine and went out for some breakfast nearby on Pushkin street. We ordered khachapuri adjaruli, but the waitress misunderstood and brought us two - so we had quite a big (and full of colesterol) breakfast.

We went back to the house and hanged the clothes out to dry. Then we wanted to go out, but instead se slept for about another hour (hey, it's the seaside. We're allowed some laziness). BTW, I don't think I said enough about this place yesterday: it's quite strange. The house has no door. There's a cement stairway leading straight to the living room from the small yard. The living room's floor is also just bare cement. Only the rooms are tiled. Very strange.

Anyway, when we finally moved out butts out of the house, we went for a walk towards the sea. Batumi lies on a penninsula very similar to Haifa in shape, but with no mountain and with a smaller bay. We walked to the beach (which is really nice, we'll definitely go there sometime to swim), and then along the promenade to the center. We spent some time there before returning to the house and taking our dry clothes off the rope (nice sun!).

We ate dinner on Gorgaladze street (some very good kabab), and now we're back in the house. We're not sure yet about tomorrow, but maybe we'll go to one of the smaller coastal towns around - maybe Sarpi on the Turkish border, or Ureki up in Guria.

Down to the Coast

Last night we stopped at the supermarket on the way back to the hotel and bought some eggs. For dinner we cooked ourselves eggs with cheese in the hotel's kitchen. Shower and bedtime.

The only direct marshutka to Batumi left at 9AM. We were still sleeping. We woke up very lazily, cooked the same for breakfast, packed our things, and left. We caught the 11:30 marshutka to Khashuri, 30 minutes away (but not before buying some freshly baked bread for the road). In the bus station in Khashuri we were told that we need to walk to the big traffic circle on the highway about 200 meters away to catch a minibus on its way from Tbilisi to Batumi. There, a nice police officer helped us stop the right minibus. It was the most modern minibus we've been on, with comfortable reclining seats.

The ride was quite long (or felt that way, at least). We reached the center of Batumi around 16:30. Batumi is Georgia's third largest city, and appears to be the country's most Western city out of Tbilisi. It is the capital of the Adjara region, which is apprently autonomous. It took us a little while to find the tourist center on Ninoshvili street (there's another on Rustaveli), where we got a map of the city.

We walked to a homestay that Neta and Moran recommended, though it's a bit out of the city center. On the way we stopped to rest at a cafe for two good cakes, and eventually we reached the homestay. Strangely, the old people who were here had a hard time understanding what we want (apparently they don't do it often), and had to get their downstairs neighbor, Maya, who strangely has impeccable English.

Our room wasn't clean yet since we caught them by surprise, so we just put our bags there and went to walk around. We were both pretty tired from the long ride and the walk with the bags and the humidity which we're not used to after 3 weeks on high terrain, so we sat down to get something to eat - khachapuri adjaruli, in Adjara. It was much better than the previous one we had! With it we ordered two cold bottles of "Kazbegi lemonade", but apparently in Georgia "lemonade" means "soft drink". Flavour? To the waitress's judgement. We got one pear and one tarragon.

Now we're back at the homestay. Don't think we'll do much more tonight. Just get some rest.