A Rather Late Start
As is always the case with my attempts at documenting our trips, I've taken a bit longer than expected to get started. I'm not entirely sure that I can be held to account this time though as there have been extenuating circumstances. I fear that this post may be a bit longer than I intended, as I'm trying to catch up on 2 weeks of missed memories...so buckle in folks...this could be a doozy.
What are you going to do with all your stuff?
We heard this question over and over when we were telling friends and family that we were leaving the country again. The last time we did this, we got rid of what we thought of at the time was a lot of stuff and stored the rest with family. Packing up this time though, we put our 2016 selves to shame and liquidated everything, including all of those boxes that had never been unpacked after coming back from Slovenia. Our stupid sucker of a nephew...I mean, our lovely/helpful nephew and family is again storing the few meager possessions we have on this earth for when we return.
So, after liquidating everything and begging our friends to let us stay with the them for the last few days, we packed our belongings into 4 bags and set off for Tbilisi, Georgia on August 30th, 2022.
I don't think it really hit us what we were doing until we were at the airport saying goodbye to our friends and their boys. It was way harder than I was expecting.....although it was too late to back out now.
There and back again....
We were extremely nervous about how our transfers would work as we had been hearing that airports across the world were a mess...especially in Toronto, so it came as no shock when we arrived and were told that we needed to sit on the tarmac to wait for deplaning for an extra 45 minutes. Our flight to Istanbul was going to leave in 2 hours and it was in the international terminal across the entire airport so we were a bit nervous. We finally deplaned and found the nearest departures board only to realize that our flight to Istanbul was already delayed by another hour. Oh well! It was the first time we'd ever been excited about that...it gave our checked luggage time to get put on the right plane. We finally boarded our next flight only delayed by 2.5 hours! Good thing we had a 10 hour layover in Istanbul.
Istanbul airport is HUGE and since we got almost no sleep on our flight to Istanbul, we opted to pay for a stay in a lounge. The lounge was around $80 CAD per person and provided free drinks (alcoholic and otherwise), food, lounge areas with sleeping chairs, massage, balconies, billiards, showers, wifi, and storage for luggage. Since our layover was so long in Istanbul we considered it money well spent and it was nice to be able to clean up a bit. We lounged our day away and waited for our last flight to Tbilisi. Side note: If you get a chance to fly Turkish Airlines in an overnight flight, don't hesitate! The personal care baggy, food (quality and portions), and entertainment options were something I hadn't seen in a long time from a North American carrier...Rae is still using her Turkish Airlines provided slippers here in Tbilisi.
After being sent literally across the entire airport 3 times for gate changes for our flight to Tbilisi, we boarded 1 hour late and were on the way to our final destination.
Arrival
We arrived in Tbilisi at 5am on September 1st and got our first view of the city. After apprehensively waiting for our luggage (which all managed to arrive, YAY!), we were mobbed by Taxi drivers all attempting to take us into the city. We had been told this was an issue and had pre-downloaded the Bolt app (equivalent of Uber) and were about to use that when an older man who spoke no english, aside from "Ok, Ok", agreed through translation to transport us to our airbnb for a fair price. It was only after we got to his car that we realized he had no ability to use cards and we had no Georgian Lari yet. "Ok, Ok" was used again and he insisted we get in. Are we being kidnapped? Rae and I shared an unsure glance but I was pretty sure that Rae and I could 'take him' if he started driving in the wrong direction. True to his word, he took us to a gas station where I paid for his gas in lieu of the fare. After struggling to find our apartment we were able to arrive at our first 'home' in one piece and were ready to sleep the day away.
The First Days...
To say our first apartment underwhelmed us would have been an overstatement. It was less than clean (which we have so far seen is pretty common), dark, and....just less than ideal. What it lacked in good apartment space, it made up for in loud street dogs and a tortoise that chased you around the yard attempting to headbutt your foot.
We wanted to immerse ourselves into the food as quickly as possible so our first supper in country was to Klike's Khinkali. Khinkali is the Georgian pierogi/dumpling and is filled with any number of things including a mix of pork/beef, just pork, some greens, mushrooms, potatoes, or cheese. They are then boiled and served piping hot at anywhere from 1Gel (50cents) to 1.4Gel (65 cents) per Khinkali. Usually, 5-8 khinkali is enough for a meal depending on how hungry you are but of course there is a scoreboard in Klike's with the high score currently at 28 Khinkali in one sitting! We opted for the mushroom, pork/beef, and pork and greens khinkali and it was delicious. This will become a staple of our food here, I'm sure of it.
We spent the next few days figuring out the subway system (which is incredibly easy I might add), and exploring the old town of Tbilisi. Just like every other city, the hawkers are out in FORCE so be prepared to turn on that RBF and ignore, ignore, ignore. The only positive here is that there is so many Russians in country at the moment that everyone assumes we're Russian...it's a whole lot easier to ignore someone when they speak to you in Russian and you don't understand anyways.
One of Tbilisi's subway stops
Old Town Charm
I have been fawning over pictures of old town Tbilisi for longer than I can remember at this point so to actually be here was an emotional feeling. Standing on the Peace Bridge for the first time it was exciting to realize that we'd made it and it was every bit as beautiful as we'd imagined. We toured until our feet begged us to stop and felt like we barely made a dent...
Liberty Square Old Town looking up at Narikala Fortress
View from the Peace Bridge on the Mtkvari River
View from Rike Park with Sioni Cathedral on the right View of Narikala and old town at night from Metekhi Bridge
Moving Day
It wasn't until day 3 that we started to realize that maybe the current airBNB wasn't tenable for an entire month. Coming back late at night one day, we opened our door to a small creature scuttling across the floor...Rae's love of small critters kicked into high gear and he was quickly squished underfoot. On closer inspection...a cockroach. Hmm, that's not good. Our search for a new place had begun, airBNB was extremely good to work with (although slow), and within a day we had we had a new place only a few blocks from our current place. Much cleaner and higher up so the roaches couldn't reach us, right?
The Lada right outside the entrance to our apartment. It hasn't moved once.
Late edit: The building pictured above is NOT our new residence for the month. I wanted to add this comment after Raeleen informed me that I made it sound like it might be. Our building is behind the camera and not pictured.
With the temperatures hitting almost 40 degrees for a week straight, we spent the next week exploring outside for a few hours at a time and then retreating to shade and air conditioning; the heat was just straight up oppressive. It didn't help that I had of course left my hat on one of our planes over, and as you all know...there isn't as much coverage up there anymore. It made it very hard to explore our first new location in 5 years, but we did what we could by spending a day going up the gondola to Narikala Fortress and exploring even more of the old town.
In front of Narikala Fortress, looking down on Tbilisi
It really is amazing to see the diversity in the area, from Mosque, to church, to bathhouse, to cobblestone streets, to a beautiful canyon right in the middle of the city, there is so much to see.
What we believe to be 'Svan' towers on the backside of the hill that Narikala is on.
We continued our day by escaping to the relative cool of the canyon just behind Narikala. This is the stream that fed many of the bathhouses in the old town in earlier times. Looking at older photos, you can see that not much has changed in terms of the architecture in this area. People would come down to the streams to bath themselves monthly, weekly, or even daily as the water was incredibly clean and had/has supposed healing properties. Georgians are incredibly proud of their water sources in general and the high mineral content is supposedly very good for you.
Leghvtakhevi Waterfall (don't ask me to pronounce it)
Just a bit further down from the waterfall. Notice on the left, the domed bathhouse. On the right, a
mosque repurposed into another bathhouse.
Of course, we had to take many breaks for drinks and as much new food as we could stuff into our faces. A word of caution, as we've been caught off guard numerous times now, make sure you pay attention to portion sizes at other tables when in Georgia because they are almost always HUGE. More than a few times now we've ordered separately and then realize that just one of the dishes would have been enough for both of us.
Rae's dish called Mkhlovana. Stuffed with spinach, beet greens, and cheese. Topped with spinach,
barberry, and cottage cheese.
Sameba
It's literally impossible to search Tbilisi on google and not see pictures of this cathedral. Since it seems to be such a big deal, we figured it might be best to take a trip up to see what all the fuss was about. Turns out...it's a pretty impressive cathedral. Its the 3rd tallest cathedral in the world, and one of the largest religious buildings in the world.
The impressive Sameba Cathedral.
The view overlooking the city from Sameba Cathedral grounds
Deserters Bazaar
The Deserter's Bazaar is a large Bazaar in Tbilisi. It is absolutely
massive and has stalls selling EVERYTHING and I mean absolutely
everything. Rae and I spent a few hours exploring and got lost many
times in the twists and turns. The 4 pictures included are all of the
Bazaar and do a horrible job explaining the breadth of things you can
find here. The nice thing though is that all items of one kind are sold
in the same area, so if you have a general idea of what you're looking
for you can easily go to the proper area of the bazaar.
Bad luck?
As I've already told lots of people back home, it was around day 5 that Rae started to feel unwell with me following not too long after. At first we thought it was just food poisoning and tried to wait it out although it was calling all the shots. This meant that our plans were heavily placed on hold and were down to the whims of the closest washroom. With that in mind, the days where we woke up feeling a bit better we tried to do as much as possible. On one of those days we managed to head up to "The Chronicles of Georgia". This Soviet built monument was to commemorate 3000 years of Georgian statehood and 2000 years of Georgian Christian dissemination. Sadly, it was never finished as the fall of the Soviet Union meant that there was no funding for the project. Even still, it is an impressive site overlooking Tbilisi and sitting right on the edge of the city.
Looking out over the 'Tbilisi Sea' from the Chronicles of Georgia. A man-made reservoir.
By around day 10 though of not feeling any better, and having tried multiple things already we realized maybe it was something worse than food poisoning. After a bit of reading, we 'believe' that we may have had giardia as all the symptoms aligned so after a consultation with my medically aligned family it was off to the drug store for a dose of antibiotics...which handily enough, you don't need a prescription for. You just tell them what you need and how much and you're good to go.
From here, it was only looking up as we were very excited to be done with this feeling of sickness and to be able to properly explore outside the city. We have just finished our first excursion outside of Tbilisi and will write about it shortly and have another planned for this coming weekend. In the meantime, here are some random photos that I couldn't fit in anywhere else. I feel like I've rambled on long enough.
Art piece in Tbilisi. We aren't influencers though, so you won't have to see this on our instagram :P
View of the riverbank with some of the houses built on the cliffs over the river.
Pedestrian Area
Our absolutely delicious meal at Mapshalia. Definitely a contender for some of the best Georgian food we've had so far.