Day trip to Borjormi, Rabati and Vardazia

Another day in Kutaisi but today we have a road trip to see some popular sites outside of Kutaisi. Luckily the weather gods are in our favor this beautiful morning. We meet our guide for the day and discover we are the only two in our group. Our tour guide Lasha is friendly and very knowledgeable of Georgian history.

Our first stop is at Borjomi, the sight of a natural suplhur spring that contains healing waters, and also the birthplace of the popular bottled Borjormi Sparkling water that is sold internationally. We try it once at one smaller spring while it is cold and it is drinkable but slightly sulphuric but when we try the spring warm in another location it is has a strong sulphur and rust taste. It is supposed to be healing so hopefully it fixes my stomach that has not been cooperative lately. The springs are in a peaceful park along a river with bridge crossings and depending on where we are in the park we hear either the chirp of birds or the sound of loud music from a tourist vendor. The historic borjomi building is currently under construction and will be reopened as a museum.

We have a long drive that gets broken up with some road side views including some old fortresses and beautiful views of the river and mountain side.

We stop at the 12th century mountain cave site of Vardzia. This elaborate system of caves built to be a monastery was destroyed greatly from an earthquake in 1283. Despite the earthquake it was still used until the country was invaded by the Ottoman Empire. Prior to the earthquake the caves provided good protection from invaders and the cave system provided comfortable temperatures year round as well as a natural water supply.

Fresh water is supplied via condensation and stored in reservoirs.

We stop for a charming lunch by the fast flowing river. We try the most amazing red beans (Lobio).

Our final stop is Rabati Castle (Akhaltsikhe Castle), or beautiful castle complex initially built in the 9th century with very little important history and pales in comparison to what we have just seen today.

Today is a long day of driving between the three locations but a common theme is road cows; cows, cows, everywhere. Cows roam the nearby pastures daily and commute home, sometimes blocking the roads.

We arrive back late so we rest up for tomorrow, our last full day in Kutaisi. We plan to tour old sanitoriums, more on the

Arrived in Kutaisi

We wake early to take our 9am bus to Kutaisi, Georgia. This bus is newer and clean but they have strict rules about what bags they let you take to your seat so we have to quickly decide what we need for comfort for the next 4 hours. The driver swerves and occasionally honks and yells at cars going too slow but also at cars that pass him up while he is in the fast lane. Crazy drivers seem to be a theme of Georgia.

The apartment we have rented in Kutaisi isn’t the best place I’ve stayed in. It’s clean but lacking some things of convienence that make a stay more comfortable (like having to climb 5 flights of stairs or missing dish towels). Fortunately the host happily communicates with us through a translator app and we are in a central location.

We drop our bags off and walk around the corner to meet our day tour that is scheduled today. It is now shoulder season so our group tour ends up being a private tour instead. Initially it feels awkward but we soon value the personal attention.

The city of Kutaisi used to be a more popular tourist location due Kutaisi having direct international flights to certain cities but with the opening of the high speed rail between Tblisi and Batumi Kutaisi has become become less popular.

We start our tour in Central Park, a charming park next to the Colchis fountain and the Meshkhishvili theater. The Colchis fountain was installed in 2012 to feature the historic Colchi kingdom. All of the gold emblems on the fun fountain are enlarged reproductions of artifacts found during excavations of the colchi period.

While we explore town we are told local stories about some of the people honored with statues. We admire the street art and learn about one district that was settled by the French. We see a Catholic Church in its historic beauty before it is due to be “renovated” to an Orthodox Church. When it is converted, they will destroy all the original catholic parts. While not the only religion in the country, Eastern Orthodox Christianity is the most popular.

Kutaisi is a sleepy town compared to Tblisi but has its own charm. This boy with a hat sitting on the bridge is a character in a popular Georgian film.

Our tour guide takes us through the local market and we learn about the Georgian spices and treats.

At tour ending we ask our guide for restaurant recommendations and she recommends the restaurant in the Magnolia Hotel, a charming authentic Georgian food experience. I am excited to try new dishes. I enjoy most of what we try except the chicken dish I ordered as my main dish. My stomach is still uneasy from the day before and I am having a hard time with the grease content of the recipe. I will be happy when my stomach is back to normal.

We are tired from traveling today so we return to our flat for an earlish night, enjoying a nightcap from one of the few bottles of things we have picked up to sample along the way. Tomorrow it is supposed to rain all day so we re-arrange our excursion plans last minute to turn tomorrow into a lazy in town shopping day. It proves a good idea because it does start raining early in the day. I brave the rain briefly in the morning to get a decent cup of coffee but eventually we have to eat so we choose an art cafe not too far from our flat. We share a pizza and delcious salad.

We visit the market afterwards. Thank goodness the market is mostly under a covered area. First we visit an underground clothing and accessory market, much of it catering to older conservative women. We then return to the food market where we buy some spices and various goods. We spend some time trying to shop in the cheese section but it is impossible to get the attention of one of the cheese women since she is currently occupied with yelling at a woman at another booth right now. We return later to buy some samples of cheese from a woman who is not yelling.

We feed some street dogs hot dogs and are tired of the rain. We return to the room to try the pomegranate wine we have purchased yesterday from Armenia. I am not sure if we have a bad bottle or the wine is just really that bad but we end up pouring most of it down the drain. A wine has to be pretty bad for us to waste and this vinegar wine is terrible.

We finish the evening at the fancy restaurant around the corner. We are entertained by a pianist and violin player.

Tomorrow we have another day tour planned in town. Hopefully the weather is good. We’ve had too much rain so far.

Day tour to Armenia

Today we have a long bus tour scheduled to Armenia. I normally do not participate in the whole visit-a-country-in-a-day thing but I am curious about Armenia and want to see if it warrants a longer visit another time. I love the introduction to the country but it is a painfully long day, especially when my stomach doesn’t feel the best.

We mistakenly arrive at the wrong meeting spot after seeing other’s waiting for another tour. We ask another guide if our tour meets here erand he says “I think they meet here, probably”. We wait for a while longer and get nervous that no one else is here for our tour yet. We double check the meeting spot and find out we are in the wrong meeting spot. We quickly rush over to the correct spot; we aren’t the last two to arrive as two others have been delayed due to street closures caused by an impromptu holiday (the patriarch has recently died in Georgia). Unfortunately the only seats left on the bus together are in the very back where we have a poor view out the window for the long drive.

To travel to Armenia from Georgia we have two border crossings stops that require us to get out of the van: one to leave Georgia and one to enter Armenia. We use the toliet facilities at the Georgian crossing and they are some of the worst toliets we have seen in the country thus far. Our border check seems to take longer than normal because there are three girls in our group with a special visa situation that delays us a bit.

Our first stop is at Haghpat Monastery, a medieval Monastery. I admire the property and interesting arches inside. There is a man that lives nearby and takes care of the monastery grounds. He is very friendly and offers to show me how to take good pictures of the structure inside. He tells me how his friend made one of the altars currently inside the church.

We stop briefly at the Dilijan, the Switzerland of Armenia; called that because its houses are similar to those in the Swiss alps. We view a lake and statue based on a famous movie that contains a Russian man, a Georgian man, and an Armenia man.

We stop at a fancy rest stop for lunch.

The temperature gets colder and the wind is biting on our journey up the stairs in up to Sevanavank, the charming church that overlooks the large Lake Sevan, the largest lake in Armenia.

We drive for a while further and we arrive in the city of Yerevan, the capital of Armenia. What we see is pretty but we have too short of time to really enjoy the city. We visit the mother of Armenia monument and the famous steps in the city center. The steps are at the end of a park adorned with art sculptures (I spy a Botero or two in there). Many in our group climbs the steps up but I choose the escalator option due to my uneasy stomach. From the top there are beautiful views of the city.

We then undergo a very long ride back to Georgia, border crossings and all. We don’t arrive back until almost midnight. The tour guide’s assistant takes some spectacular photos of the rainbows we see on the way. A fun thing the guide does during the drive is have each person play a song from their country for the van. It is a fun icebreaker but would have been useful at the beginning of the day to get to know the group better. I learn that the American rock band System of the Down is mostly Armenian. When it is our turn we choose Cher and the song Believe. The overachiever in me is glad I choose someone who is both American and Armenian.

Free day in Tblisi

Last night ended up being a bit of a late night so we are grateful we have no early morning is planned today. We finally take advantage of the breakfast offered by the hotel.

It is a rainy day, one of many of our time in Georgia, but we plan to visit markets today and some are luckily indoors. I am not usually a big shopper but during the last couple of trips I seem to buy more souvenirs than usual. Today it is earings – I buy an unspecified number of unique pairs today. I also discover some artwork I may want to purchase on my return trip to Tbilisi. We visit the Median Bazar, a smaller underground store where all the different local tourist items can be purchased.

We finally try the wine ice cream. It is quite lovely.

The rain has halted and we walk down to dry bridge market to see what is being sold there. Dry Bridge Market is an expansive market of local art, antiques, and jewelry.

We shop until we literally drop into a cafe where we order a khachapuri and a bottle of wine that gives us a free local cheese board. We use this time to plan our evening. We attempt to see the special seven o’clock show at the clock tower but our walk takes longer than we anticipated. We catch the shortened bell at another hour instead.

We stop at the famous Caravanserai Bakery for bread for an early morning breakfast tomorrow; we have a long day scheduled in Armenia tomorrow and no time for breakfast.

Dinner is at a casual restaurant where we have to choose our seat based on where the resident dog is not sleeping. In between his naps he wakes up periodically to guard the place. Dog would occasionally run off barking at random people or cars. During outr meal a guy walks on the terrace wearing a knockoff Louis Vuitton jumpsuit asking each table for money. The dog senses bad energy and chases the man off barking. My meal is lackluster and unfortunately I think is the cause for my gastrointestinal distress for the next few days.

We have a charming walk back to our hotel to rest up for tomorrow. Tomorrow will be a very long day.

Some more pictures from the day around town.

Georgia day tour to Mtskheta, Jvari, Gori and Uplistsikhe

It is raining and gloomy in Tblisi this morning but luckily the bad weather doesn’t follow us to the cave city of Uplistsikhe. We walk along stone paths through this settlement which is thought to be the oldest in Georgia and imagine how life must have been living in the ancient kingdom of Kartli. Dogs follow us along during parts of our tour. This cave town was abandoned and hidden and was re-discovered many years later.

We are touring today with a larger group consisting of tourists from various different countries – including two other people from USA which I am finding rare when I travel to Eastern Europe. Because we are a larger group I enjoy an amazing spread of Georgian food at lunch time. Group meals such as these are ideal since I always find it challenging to getting a sample of local foods.

Our next stop is Gori and the Stalin museum. I was looking forward to this stop because I have been really interested in history lately but it turns out to be more of a memorial to the guy. Luckily our guide is able to fill in all the details that are left out of the museum.

Joseph Stalin is from Georgia but later went on to be the leader of the Soviet Union after Lenin died. Like I said the museum was mostly missing many of of the horrific details of his life but you do get a slice of information of how his early life was. There is a model of the house he lived in where tunnels where dug below to hold a secret area for political dissidents to meet and distribute communist propaganda.

We stop at Mtskheta and visit both the Svetitskhoveli Cathedral and Jvari monastery. Svetitskhoveli Cathedral is an UNESCO site where the original church was built on the site in the 4th century. Its claim to fame is that it has a piece of Jesus’s robe buried with a woman here. There’s a whole lore about it.

Our last stop is Jvari Monastery, a 6th century medieval church, with its breathtaking views of the rivers below. This UNESCO church designated a style of church development, Jvari style. We have missed the opening hours of the church but we are told there is not much to see inside anyway.

After our tour guide drops us off in Tbilisi we look for places nearby for dinner and end up stopping in shops on the way. After getting yelled at for taking pictures at a place I am about to sample wines from I get invited by the lady who runs the shop next door to sample her wines. This family owned store had homemade wines, fruit and grape, and chacha. The angry shop owner adjacent probably really boosts their neighbor’s sales. We sample wines and buy souvenirs plus wines to drink later.

Walking closer to our hotel we find a beautiful street filled with restaurants with outdoor seating. We have a nice meal to finish our day of sightseeing.

We detour to a nearby park during our walk back to our hotel. We hear a 90’s cover band doing a sound check for the evening. We pop in for drink or two, singing along until we can’t stay awake anymore.

Much of our travel this trip is staying in two cities for a good number of days and scheduling day tours to things not easily reached. It seems like a good idea but leads to long exhausting days of travel. Today’s tour of Mtskheta, Jvari, Gori and Uplistsikhe isn’t too bad though, we get back into town at a decent hour. Our next day tour is not so lucky. Tomorrow we have a free day in Tbilisi. I hope the weather holds out.