Tbilisi

Apr 25 - May 1 

We spent a relaxing five days in Tbilisi in another lovely Airbnb apartment. The apartment had a nice kitchen, a smart tv to play music off youtube while we cooked for ourselves, and a washing machine to do our laundry. There was a huge grocery store just a few hundred yards away and we ended up cooking nearly all of our meals in. We're a little over halfway into the trip, and we've come to appreciate the opportunities to just slow down, be self sufficient, and do some chores. Like, washing dishes is actually kind of enjoyable. Remind me of this when I go home, for sure I'll forget. 

Making risotto

Tbilisi is filled with cathedrals and old buildings mixed in with newer buildings. The public transportation was cheap, with metro and bus rides costing about $0.20 each. We spent a few days wandering around, taking a gondola up to a fortress on top of a hill near a giant silver statue of Mother Georgia. It was Easter Sunday for the Eastern Orthodox Church and we saw the clergy standing around chatting with each other outside of some of the churches. We spent a few hours in the Georgian National Museum, filled with a random assortment of minerals, fossils, archaeological and religious treasures, and an exhibit on the Soviet occupation. They had a great treasury collection, with coins from the Georgian, Roman, and Persian empires. They were mostly found in Georgia, demonstrating its role as a crossroads between worlds. The Soviet occupation exhibit was partially a tribute to the victims of the occupation, as Russia had killed many thousands of Georgians for resisting. 

We took a day trip to Davit Gareja, a cave monastery on the border with Azerbaijan dating back to around 600 AD. It grew over the centuries to a large complex before it was sacked in the late 13th century by the Mongolian horde, then was rebuilt before being destroyed again in the 17th century by a Persian army, when some 6,000 monks were killed. It has been partially restored and still contains an active church and a few resident monks, but most of the caves lie empty and it's free for tourists to scramble around the hills and climb into the past. So desolate out there, makes you wonder what it was like to live there full time. There are some frescoes from the 12th century still visible in a few of the caves, showing scenes like the Last Supper, partially obscured by scratched graffiti accumulated over the years. It was weird to be in such an ancient archaeological site with no supervision and dangerously steep trails with no rails or even much in the way of signs. It was also bizarre to see the Georgian and Azerbaijani border guards sitting around with their assault rifles in the middle of nowhere. They looked pretty bored, and no tourists made a mad dash across the border. 

We did one last bit of wine tasting at a nice place with a nitrogen dispensing system which let us try a wide variety of Georgian wines, including an amber. Sounds obvious, but amber is different than any other type of wine. They tended to be full bodied with more minerals and less fruit in the nose. We bought a couple expensive bottles ($15! the good stuff!) to give to Laurel and Tim in Tokyo . We flew out at 3:00 am on Qatar Air on the emptiest plane we've ever ridden on, with only 20 people on a plane that could seat over a hundred. We didn't complain as we each had our own aisle to sleep on before we transfered in Doha to a new plane. So long Caucuses, on to Tokyo, Japan!

Davit Gareja

 Tbilisi

Never ending escalator down to Tbilisi Metro