Back to Tbilisi and new adventures

We made it back to Tbilisi. I have one day with my friend and then she flies back home.

We check into the hotel quickly and then walk to Fabrika again since the new hotel is closer. We stop at a fancy wine store on the way and grab a bottle just before it starts pouring rain again. This is will be the last bottle of Georgian wine we enjoy together before my friend takes off soon. But tonight we have reservations for a dinner show. The show we are attending is a traditional Georgian show with music, dance and food. We’ve been wanting to see one of these shows but they no longer have any like these in Kutaisi so this is our last chance before my friend leaves.

Tonight’s dinner show is at the Georgian House. They serve traditional Georgian food but we try something new -pickled cabbage similar to kimchi. There is a large traditional band that plays folk songs and periodically dancers come out to entertain us with the unique dancing style of Georgia.

The night is great but after lots of wine and it being a travel day I decide to sleep in a bit the next morning. We try a sulphur bathhouse close to our hotel, a great low key idea. This bath is recommended by another passenger on our bus ride back from Kutaisi yesterday. The spa is close, less crowded, and much cheaper than the ones in the main part of town. I am not much of a sauna person but I do alternate between the hot sulphur water and the cold bucket plunge. I may have even acted out a scene in the movie flashdance.

After the spa we visit more markets, view artwork, and of course there are more cats to admire.

There is once more another visit to the wine window and more town to explore. Having our fill of Georgian food we try italian food, some ice cream and dodge more rain again.

I cut the fun short because need to return back to the hotel to meet with my tour group for the next part of my adventures. The second half of my visit to Georgia is with a tour group from Girls Love Travel. I have been wanting to check out one of their tours forever.

I am introduced to everyone in our upcoming travel group and we talk logistics. After the meeting we head to a nearby bar with a DJ to celebrate a birthday of a new person I have just met on the tour. Only one other girl and I has never been on a tour with this company. It seems like a tight knit group but everyone seems open and nice. Looking forward to the next few days.

My travel companion leaves early in the morning while I am still sleeping. I am sad to see her go but I know she needs to get home. I am thankful I have some more people to spend time with. I love solo travel but there are moments I get lonely so this is nice for a change.

Soviet Sanatorium Tour in Tskaltubo

During the Soviet Occupation after WWII, Georgia, a soviet territory at the time became a popular spot for healing sanatoriums due to the sulphur springs that occur naturally here. In Tskaltubo, the town near Kutaisi, many of these sanatoriums were built and used as a healing destination. At the end of the Cold War, the majority of these buildings were abandoned. Many are decaying quickly and some become makeshift apartment buildings for unhoused people. While there are a couple that are privately owned and restored, most just exist these days for exploring by people who are fascinated by crumbling architecture. We visit a few of these buildings with a tour guide. The guide takes us to some of the “safer” buildings but we still have to explore with caution since there is broken glass everywhere, the non-existance of railings and roofs that look like they may collapse at any moment. We enjoy imagining the abandoned buildings in their former glory.

Our last stop is at a now abandoned Tskaltubo train station.

After the short tour we return to town and have a nice lunch at Palaty, a restaurant recommended by our guide.

We spend the rest of our time in Kutaisi visiting the hilltop church and exploring town.

We get notice at 8 PM that our day tour and transfer to Tbilisi is cancelled due to bad weather. We are very disappointed because not only do we miss visiting the canyons, we are left with no ride to Tbilisi last minute. We scramble to find alternative transportation. There are some very cheap options like the small Marshrutka vans that we still have not used during our travels but settle on the citybus that we used to first arrive in Kutaisi. It is disappointing that our day tour is cancelled but at least we now plan to arrive in Tblisi much earlier. The bus ride is fine except it is late and it is not entirely clear where the actual bus stop is. We gather at this green square and it is raining on and off and wait. There are no signs to tell you that the city bus will actually stop here. We start talking to other’s who are also confused but waiting for the same bus. Taxi drivers in the area confirm we are in the correct place but with no sign we are still apprehensive. Eventually the bus does arrive and we make it back to Tblisi.

Luckily the next hotel in Tbilisi is more modern. I was getting tired of walking up five flights of stairs multiple times a day to a not as nice apartment.

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.