And the capital of Georgia is.....

Tbilisi!  It was our next destination and everyone was excited about some city life, cafes and restaurants and 2 nights in a hotel.  It was only a few hours drive and we got there around lunch time.  The main priority at that point for me and many others after 5 nights bushcamping was laundry.  The hotel was really expensive so we decided to try and find a laundrette.  A real team effort was employed, with me finding one in the Georgian Yell.com site, googling the address, Hayden getting our guide to phone them and then all of us for finding it!  It's definitely one thing that is a pain when on the road and your definition of whether something is clean definitely changes - wearing something once and washing it is a luxury that we can't give ourselves!

With reassurances that our laundry would be ready the next day we all headed off for a bit of a wander around and then sat and had a drink in a nice bar.  It has to be said though - whilst it was obvious from our surroundings that we were back in the city, we would have known from the attitude of the people.  Whilst in the countryside everyone was really friendly - not so much in the city, with everyone from the hotel staff to shop workers being quite abrupt and/or rude!  Oh well.

Louise and Becs had decided to try and organise a group meal for the evening so we headed back to get ready for that.  They had booked an Indian restaurant which we were all looking forward to.  We headed off in anticipation and walked through some questionable areas before we reached the restaurant, which seemed nice enough.  However the evening was not a success, with meals taking up to 2 hours to arrive, food arriving cold and some disputes over bills.  It was not the best start to a night that was supposed to end up with us going for a night on the town - unfortunately most of us had had enough and ended up back at the hotel for just after 10pm.  It was a shame, not the girls' fault though - the restaurant was just not equipped to deal with a group our size all ordering different things.  The day in Tbilisi though had not been a resounding success, with the best part being finding the laundry!

The next morning Za Za, our guide, did a walking tour of the city.  Unfortunately my feet were covered in blisters from all the walking the day before so I decided to give it a miss.  Instead I just pottered around the hotel then caught the metro into Liberty Sq.  Whilst wandering around I came across half a dozen of the group and joined them for lunch.  Jo and I then went to find the funicular railway and took a trip up to the top of the hill for a view of the city......

At the top of the hill there was some cafes but mostly a kind of kids area with rides etc, not for me but just nice to get the good view.  We then headed back to get our clean laundry and at night I had a night at the ballet to look forward to!  I'd read in the Lonely Planet that Tbiisi was a good place for either opera or ballet.  There was no opera on so a night at the ballet it was.  Anna and Simon also wanted to go so they had got me a ticket - they were so expensive at £2 each!  We headed there and had pretty good seats.  It was quite enjoyable, especially for the price!

Anna at the opera

That was it for my time in Georgia.  I have to say I've enjoyed it on the whole - the people have been nice, they food good and the scenery has been stunning.  It's cheap and accessible from Europe so look out for more people coming here in the next 10 years.

Next stop Armenia!

Georgian food, wine and mountains Pt3!

Hi - sorry, I am quite far behind with this now as I am now in Azerbaijan but I'll try and get as much of it done  tonight as I can - that may mean less photos though as that's what takes the longest.  I'd rather get it more up to date though.

So where did I leave you?  Ah yes, we had done 3 of our 5 night bushcamping and were starting to get a bit whiffy!  With the help of baby wipes and some dry shampoo we were semi presentable again and we were off back down that military highway -  perhaps even scarier on the way down.  Next stop was Telavi, the wine region in Georgia.  Georgia claims to be the home of wine, believing they were the first to make it. Not sure how true that it but hey, we were happy to try it out.  We had been sampling a lot of the local wines with mixed results - in Batumi it was nice, in Mestia and Kazbegi.  The main advantage was that it was definitely cheap!  Anyway, we got to Telavi around 5 and set up camp in a farmer's field.  The local farmer came to join us and his chainsaw came in handy for cutting firewood.  He also gifted us some mushrooms and goose eggs.  We were also a sight for a number of the local kids who joined us in the field and had arm wrestling and press up competitions with some of the guys...

Phil with the farmer

Alex arm wrestling

James with his press ups

Andy

Unfortunately it was a very wet camp and it was the first time we had to put up the 'party tent' which we can all fit in to stay dry - but only if we're all standing.  It was a happy camp despite the rain as the next day we were off wine tasting which was an included activity and one we were all looking forward to :-)

We set off the next morning to first stop at a local monastery then we were off  for lunch and wine tasting.  It all started well, with the monastery being nice and fairly easy to find.  Here are a few pics...

 

 

 (we had to put a skirt on to enter the monastery)

Funniest thing was though that someone noticed that there was wifi at the monastery - check out the name of the network (top one)

 

 

 

After that tings started to go wrong, as our local guide had no idea where he was going - we ended up driving about for hours trying to find the wine tasting places.  In the nick of time we found the first place as there were some grumpy and hungry travellers who were keen to sample the wine.  This place was fairly decent and we had some lunch then sampled the wine - the white was horrible but the wine was quite nice even though I don't drink red normally. 

 

 

A slightly happier and tipsier Odyssey lot got back on the truck to head to the next place.  We had high hopes for it as Teresa and Simon had been before and told us the wine was nice.  When we found it to say we were disappointed was a bit of an understatement!  Where the first place had been slightly rustic with the wines in the floor vats etc, this was more commercial.  We could have overlooked this if the wine had been nice but the first white we tasted was met with screwed up faces from everyone.  The second was slightly more palatable until someone pointed out that there was maggots in it - yuck!  Some red was tasted by some and after a while, we made our polite goodbyes and left - most of us slightly disappointed that the day had not turned out as expected.  One the plus side, the winery was run by a very lovely old couple who were really friendly and happy to see us!

 

Bex trying to give away her maggot wine (now fondly remembered as Magwine)

Bex with her magwine, Kelly cringing and David laughing!

Jo with her wine before the maggots were spotted!

 

The day wasn't a total washout, we did laugh about it all and had a bit of a singalong on the truck on the way back to the campsite - with Andy leading on guitar!

 

 

 

We were determined not to give up on the wine tasting and so Mary and Kelly found a local winery that also did Georgian cooking classes, we got our guide to give them a call and we were happy to get a trip there arranged for the next day for 16 of us :-)

 

This was a resounding success, with the family there teaching us how to make the local aubergine dish, as well as bread and Georgian Snickers.  Also, the wine was lovely - I even bought some to take away with me.

 

 

We then headed back to Telavi but we had happily moved on from our bushcamp to a lovely homestay where we were happy to get showered and cleaned up from our 5 days of dirt!

 

That's all for now, one final Georgia post to come before I head to Armenia and Azerbaijan!

 

Georgian food, wine and mountains! Pt2

After leaving Mestia we had a really long drive day and made it to Kutaisi where we stayed in a guest house/homestay. On the way we stopped off to go to the Prometheus caves.  They were impressive but we arrived pretty late in the day and the guide practically ran us through!

Although we had the next morning there, it was mostly spent by everyone either helping to stock up the truck bar or going to the market to stock up the food as we were off on 5 nights bush camping! We had been given the news the night before that we had the 5 nights bushcamping and it was met with more than a few groans. Our itinerary in Georgia is flexible and has been designed by our guide around visa applications, best times to visit certain places etc so we just have to go with it.

After the shopping was loaded and bar was stocked we were on our way to Gori, the birthplace of Stalin and our first of 5 consecutive bushcamps. We stopped en route at the Stalin museum and I can only describe it as a very surreal experience. Now, before I say too much more I want to mention that I was not looking for something that rewrote history. Stalin is very much part of Georgian recent history and that should not be erased - it's important to learn from the past. However, this was something else. The first bit we stopped at was the museum shop whilst the tickets were bought.  In the shop they were selling Stalin tshirts, matches, mugs, postcards etc - very weird.  We had a guide who took us round this large grand building telling us a load of factual information about Stalin, his childhood, his exiles and escapes to Siberia and rise to prominence, all of which was fine and interesting.  However, there was a tiny room called the room of repression which basically skipped over the fact that there were millions 'taken' or killed under his regime - not particuarly balanced!

After that we set up bushcamp for the night before heading of to Kazbegi in the north of Georgia, very near to the border with Chechnya.  To get there we had to drive along the Georgian Military Highway through the mountains - scariest road yet!  It didn't help that one of the girls had watched a programme on the world's most dangerous roads that had featured that road, yikes.

We spent 2 nights bushcamping in Kazbegi and whilst it was pretty, there wasn't too much there so not much to say!

Will continue with Pt3 later!