Summer 2021 - Georgia Part 1

 

Georgia 2021- Day 1. Frankfurt to Tbilisi

Easy flight with Lufthansa, starting at 2 pm and landing four hours later at Tbilisi (8 pm local time because of the time difference). I had a taxi and a very friendly taxi driver waiting for me, and drove into Tbilisi (easier to pronounce it Tbi Lisi) in style. A well illuminated and fairly modern city.

I am staying at the Irmani Hotel, which is middle-range and quite comfortable, and had pizza for dinner. 

Georgia 2021– Day 2. Kazbegi day tour

I woke up at an ungodly hour, had coffee in my room, and by 7 am I went out to look for breakfast. I found it in a convenience store in the form of a flaky pastry filled with baked beans. Interesting and very tasty. It cost 2 lari, or about US $0.50.

At 9 am I joined my booked day-tour to the high Caucasus mountains, intent on seeing Kazbegi peak, which at 5,300 m elevation (16,000 ft) is the highest peak in this mountain chain. Highlights of the trip included:

Jinvali Reservoir, which was built as a simple earth dam while still part of the USSR 40 years ago (Georgia became its own independent nation after the USSR broke apart in 1990). It is a 300,000 acre-foot reservoir that provides drinking water to Tbilisi. The stop is a tourist trap, but it gave us the chance to use the toilette (1 lari, which seems to be pretty standard).

Ananuri Fortress Complex, but more like a fortified church. The poor Georgians have been attacked by everyone: The Ottomans, the Armenians, and the Mongols, so they built a series of watch towers to advice the king and his knights of possible attacks. The last king was a fantastic warrior, and as old as age 65 was still dragging his sorry, scarred body into battle. Unfortunately he struck s Devil’s bargain with the Russian empire, which not only didn’t help him in his last few years (around 1790), but eventually annexed Georgia as a part of Russia.

Lunch and rafting in the Aragvi River. I paid additional 70 lari (about US$16) to take a rafting trip down the Aragvi river, and it was money very well spent. As far as exciting the trip was OK, but our guide did most of the work as he threaded us down one series of rapids after another. But the best value was the canyon itself, which was green and luscious (and fresh given that we got a little splashed all along the way). The water is white, not only because of the rapids, but also because it carries a fair amount of rock flour with it. Lunch followed in the form of shredded beet dumplings, eggplant, mushrooms stuffed with cheese, and the ever present khinkali (steamed dumplings stuffed with mashed potatoes or beef). Perfect after my exertions on the river.

Friendship Monument of Georgian and Russian People in Gudauri. We were now in the high mountains, where the best vista point is occupied by the 1983 Friendship Monument, built to commemorate the 200 year anniversary of the 1783 pact between Georgia and Russia, which as I said before only assisted on the takeover of Georgia by the Tzar. The symbolism displayed in the monument is interesting, but a bit bitter about the uncomfortable friendship between the two neighbors. I passed on the one-in-a-lifetime opportunity to go paragliding, which looked pretty awesome in this mountainous landscape.

The Rooms Hotel Kazbegi. We stopped for two hours in this hotel, where we could have a drink on the terrace and enjoy the view. Two hours? Really? OMG, what a view! Right in front of us, as if posed for a photoshoot, was the most beautiful high mountain you can imagine, Kazegi Peak. At 5,050 m elevation (16,500 ft), it is an imposing massif, particularly since it seems to rise all by itself as The Lonely Mountain. It turns out that this imposing peak is a dormant volcano, which last erupted in 700 AD. Superb!

After our 2-hour break we piled inside a four-wheel drive Japanese minivan, and ascended the steep road to Gergeti Trinity Church, on the flank of Kazbegi Peak, and from it we could look back into the town of Kazbegi and its other surrounding mountains. What an incredible place to live of two spend a couple of vacation days.

From here, just 7 km short of the border with Russia we made our return to Tbilisi, where we arrived at 10 pm. A full day!

Georgia 2021– Day 3. Kakheti

This was my second day-tour, this time to the wine-producing region of Kakheti, which is about a two-hour drive from Tbilisi. The first place we stopped at was the small town of Badiauri, known for the good bread they bake using an arrangement very similar to an Indian tandoori. It is basically a very large earthen pot, with a volume of say one cubic meter, in which you start a fire. You let the fire consume down to a few coals at the same time you mix your flour, water, and salt (with apparently no yeast or baking powder) into a runny dough rich in gluten. The baker then stretches some dough to look like a French baguette, and then presses it unto the hot sides of the pot (for the final loaves the little babushka almost dove into the pot, legs dangling high in the air). Once the sides of the pot are lined with say 50 baking loaves the opening is partially covered and 15 minutes later the baker detaches the baked loaves with a spatula. The loaves have a distinctive curvature and tear-shape cross section, have huge bubbles in them, and are pretty tough, but make the perfect accompaniment for the local cheese (cow is gentler than the strongly flavored sheep cheese) and the big sweet tomatoes.

Our guide, Janick, who definitely has the gift of gab, then took us to Bobde to visit the monastery of Saint Nino, who despite the name was a female nun that in the IV century brought Christianity to the pagan kingdom of Georgia. She is highly revered throughout the country, together with the Virgin Mother Mary. Georgians are predominantly Christian Orthodox, and their old churches and monasteries are over decorated with what we would name Byzantine art.

Our next stop was the city of Sighnaghi, or City of Love, which sits on a mountain ridge that overlooks the Kakheti Valley of Georgia. (If I could make a simile between California and Georgia, the High Caucasus would be the equivalent to the Sierra Nevada, the Kakheti wine region would be the equivalent to the Central Valley, and the Lower Caucasus would be the equivalent to the Coast Ranges. Sighnaghi, then, would be equivalent to say Livermore. It is a very pretty town, well prepared to receive a very large influx of tourists. The dominant tourism comes from the surrounding countries of Russia and Turkey, followed by Ukraine, Belarus, and the United Arab Emirates. West Europeans and Americans are few and far between.

A distinctive characteristic of Sighnaghi is its surrounding wall and battlements (The Great Wall of Georigia), which over many centuries allowed the city to remain a safe haven from invading hordes.

We had a delicious lunch here, and got our first taste of Georgian wine. They have some decent dry wines, both white and red, but locally they seem to prefer semi-sweet table wines. Lunch was composed of many vegetable dishes (beets, eggplant, shredded carrots, pickled flowers, cucumbers, and tomatoes), chicken cooked in a cream and walnut sauce, and yummy pork barbecue. For the latter Janick asked for sour plum sauce and, in honor to our Mexican guest, for a boat of the spicy hot Georgian sauce. I was warned to serve just a little at a time, and I accordingly made a big face when I took the first bite, but the truth is that it was even less than what a sweet mild tomato sauce would be in California, or what we feed to new-born babies in Mexico. My kingdom for a good Habanero sauce!

I also got to see how khachapuri is made (and of course eaten). This is the national dish, made by flattening dough as if for a pizza, filling the space with two huge scoops of dryish cheese, and then closing the dough around the cheese as if to make a pouch. You then roll this pouch flat, without breaking it so the cheese doesn’t escape, sprinkle additional cheese on top, and then bake as if it were a pizza (but no tomato sauce is involved). It is very good, but would be even better with a good scoop of hot salsa on top!

We then visited a couple of wineries, where we saw the traditional way in which wine has been made in Georgia, apparently since 1,000 BC! In fact, Georgians believe, and I am glad to grant them the honor, that Kakheti was the first wine-producing region in the world! Their four grapes varieties

 are exclusive to Georgia, and include both two white grape varieties and two red grape varieties. The grapes are recollected, and macerated by foot in long wooden troughs, with stems and seeds all together. The mix of grape juice and skins is then placed in man-size clay pots buried in the ground, covered with a lid of slate, and allowed to sit with the skins for something like two to six weeks. This gives their white wines a distinctive deep straw color, and very deep ruby color to their red wines. The wine is then separated from the mosto into separate clay pots and allowed to age for up to three years before being bottled (no oak is involved, so all wines are very low in tannins). The mosto is then distilled to form Georgian brandy, or Cha Cha, which is particularly strong and “downed” in the same way as the Italian grappa.

Georgia exports most of its wine to Russia and Ukraine (and China?), but is anxious to break into the European market. I tasted both a dry white wine and a dry red wine that I believe would do very well as medium price wines in Europe, but their preferred semi-sweet wines would probably be best marketed as table wines (red being better than white in my humble opinion).

Georgia 2021– Day 4. Tbilisi

Chrissy, Zsuzsa, and Raimond arrived last night, so the Knut-Reisen group is coming together for the first time for a guided tour of the city.

The main feature to know is that the city is traversed by the Kurah River, which has carved some very impressive cliffs on the surrounding sandstones. These cliffs were the natural place for the old city to develop, because of the ease with which forts and churches could be defended. The modern parts of the city are distributed in the surrounding hills, and the floodplain is used for boulevards and parks. Georgia became independent in 1991, but then had 15 years of a pro-Russian government that was unseated by what people here call the Revolution of Roses. So we have the old government 1991-2005 and the new government 2005-to-date, The old government decided to promote tourism and undertook some pretty fancy public works of a definitely modernistic style. The new government hates these works and would like to demolish them, but too much money would be wasted, Instead they are letting the glass palace of the government house or the glass convention center and theatre go unused, in the hope that they will simply decay (silly, if you ask me, because they are really nice pieces of modern architecture).

We went up and down the narrow streets of the old town, looked at the mineral baths that are famous throughout the country, and half-starved sat for a nice long lunch. In the afternoon I went to the National Museum (OK, but not great) and back at the hotel relaxed in the tub. Chrissy and the others went to the baths and got a peeling (basically they got bathed like babies and scrubbed until the old skin peeled away – Ouch!).

Raimond will become Opa in December, so we toasted to his good fortune 😊

Georgia 2021– Day 5. Tbilisi to Borjomi

It took a while to get ready to go, because some of our unvaccinated members of our group had to get a Covid test for them to be allowed to board the little bus (one conscious objector and our two guides, since Georgia is just rolling out its vaccine program), and we had to meet our Georgian guide, Sophia. Our German guide is Ines, and both young women look like they are serious hikers and nature lovers.

Our first leg was a short one, to the old city of Mzcheta, the old capital of Georgia. We visited a very old monastery, which is associated to the work of Saint Nino, where the only monk has been struck with Covid, so it is not clear who is taking care of the place.

Mzcheta also has a very imposing cathedral surrounded by a protective wall, and a colorful market place with everything and anything a tourist might want. This particular tourist bought himself some wine ice cream, and a hip flask of cha-cha, the local fire water (brandy really, but extremely powerful) steeped in tarragon. Someone also gave me a rather funny pill hat.

We got back in the mini-bus for an hour-long ride and, because I was seating on the right front seat, which overlooks the platform where one enters the bus, I ended disgracing myself by pitching forward into the well, like a baby who has fallen asleep in an unsupported chair. I was fine, but now everybody wants to strap me as if I were a baby!

We came to the rather magical landscape of the cave city of Uplisziche, which my highly trained geologist eye immediately recognized as a super thick sequence of eolian sandstones, not unlike the Navajo or Aztec Sandstones. Anyway, the cave city was developed in the VI to IV centuries BC, and continued its importance well into the middle ages as a ceremonial and royal area. It eventually went to seed as more and more of the aristocracy excavated flats for themselves in the comparatively soft eolian sand. The rif-raf probably lived in the lovely valley below the cliffs. There is pretty good evidence that from the early stages of occupation they had facilities to press grapes, make wine, and store it in a chamber adjacent to the royal palace!

After a good lunch we headed for Gori, the birth place of Joseph Stalin. We were not very enthusiastic about this visit, but learned that during his youth Stalin was a close companion with Lenin, that after the revolution Lenin lasted only two or three years as the Secretary General of the Communist Party, and that Stalin was his successor. Stalin occupied this position for 31 years, from 1922 until his death in 1953 (he died the same year I was born!), and that one of his guiding principles was that a leader must be ruthless. So he was ruthless and not particularly kind to Georgian dissidents, which makes you wonder why they keep a museum dedicated to his memory.

A last hour-and-a-half drive brought us to Borjomi, in the lower Caucases. This mountain town is the entry to the Borjomi-Charagauli National Park, which we plan to visit tomorrow … but a heavy rain has just started, so we will see what the morrow might bring with it.

Georgia 2021– Day 6. Borjomi-Charagauli National Park

Well, there is a bit of rain, but nothing to really make a big fuzz about. Still, as I walked down the early market place I kept having visions of muddy trails so you can imagine my happiness when I saw a nice pair of rubber boots at one of the stalls. They were a bit big for me, but by making suitable signs I tried a smaller pair, liked it, and bought it for 25 lari (about US$ 6).

A short drive brought us to the trail head at the Borjomi-Charagauli National Park, which is a very pretty valley surrounded by volcanic ridges (a porphyritic basaltic andesite) and with plenty of oaks, elms, and conifers. Right away Christine adopted a dog, which we named Nino Coco or “Nina girl”. We made the joke that if she had the time, Saint Chrissy would move through the land surrounded by dogs and dispensing love to all things canine.

I had a good chance to talk with our Georgian guide Sofia, who has the features that we are so familiar with among our own Armenian neighbors: Attractive with dark hair, big brown eyes, a sharp well-defined nose, and full lips. She must be in her late 20’s and is a passionate hiker. She is a professional guide, well versed in the history of Georgia, and looks forward to being in full employment in the tourist industry once the pandemic is over. She speaks Georgian and English, but not German, so we have to be careful not to leave her out of our conversations.

I also started what I think will be an ongoing conversation with our German guide Ines. She is maybe in her early 30’s, slender and athletic, and has lived a very adventurous life. She and her Georgian husband live in southeast Georgia, where for the last few years they have been deeply committed to organic farming in their one hectare of land. Before that she has spent time in the Netherlands and Africa, studying agriculture and participating in community improvement projects. We have found we have several common interests in the natural and environmental sciences, so I anticipate a fun time in the days to come.

Our walk was perfect. Enough to get the blood flowing, but not so strenuous that we will be hurting tomorrow. In the afternoon we stopped at yet another monastery, the Green Monastery, where a number of monks were butchered by Ottoman invaders in the Middle Ages. Their blood made the rocks in the creek turn red, and according to legend they will perform miraculous cures, but only as long as the pilgrims have true faith in their hearts (otherwise they will go back to being black stones). Zsuzsa was very excited because she found a bright red, heart-shaped stone, but I had to disappoint her by identifying it as just another oxidized basalt. I think I oxidized broke her heart.

Back to Borjomi my dear friends went to the central park to see the mineral springs, while I spent the time getting my hair cut. I was back at the hotel, enjoying the cultural experience of having navigated the visit to the hair salon, when I received a cryptic message from Chrissy directing me to “get in the taxi, which will bring you to us”. At that time the lady of the house announced “TAXI”, so I dutifully went out and got driven to the central park, where the population was enjoying a delightful early evening. But no sign of Chrissy and the others! I went into the park, entered the local restaurant, peered into the faces of the people I went by, but nothing. So I started walking back toward town, silently muttering about the lack of information in the text message until, after 15 minutes of walking downhill I spotted Sofia, who had been waiting about 15 minutes for me. Seems the taxi didn’t follow instructions and took me too far up the city park. Once together we join the others at a restaurant, where Ines had managed to piss off the waitress, who was giving us the “No soup for!” you treatment. But our driver Misha has very nice manners, and after pouring oil on troubled waters, we eventually got our dinner. For me it was a delicious bowl of borsch. 

Georgia 2021– Day 7. Vardzia

Today was devoted to exploring the cave city of Vardzia, which was developed in the Middle Ages by King George, and completed by his daughter King Tamera (yes, she was a lady, but tough as nails and officially regarded as the king of the land). This is of course the second cave city we have visited, so I presumed I was going to find the same eolian sandstones. Oh, no.

This is a volcanic region, and in this case the caves were carved in a soft, unwelded, vapor-phase altered dacitic ignimbrite. It has more in common with the Anasazi dwellings of Bandelier Canyon in New Mexico, that with the cave city of Uplisziche.

The sequence includes, from bottom to top, a dacitic rock fall, a basaltic rock fall, the Vardzia dacitic ignimbrite, and an upper sequence of basaltic lahars. I should bring my Field Geology students to map this canyon.

The city is fantastic in its many alcoves, wine cellars, and church and monastery. King Tamera was a formidable lady, but she was also very religious, so she wouldn’t have dreamed to have her capital without a temple. It is estimated that in its heyday the city may have had 6,000 inhabitants, and that it played an important role deterring the Ottoman invaders.

Excellent lunch of offal (liver, kidneys, heart, and tripe of veal) a la cacciatora, and a tasty fried trout! Last night I found some Vietnamese spicy salsa in the supermarket, so I am ready to embark in a gastronomic tour of Georgia.

In the afternoon we went to visit … yet another fortress. These boys and girls were so busy fighting with each other that it is a wonder they had a chance of doing anything else.

Georgia 2021– Day 8. Over the Lesser Caucasus

In the middle of the night our wonderful driver Misha and his minibus disappeared, so we had to pile into two 4-wheel drive Mitsubishi minivans for the hard task of going up and across the lower Caucasus. From Rabati we headed up to the region of Adjara, which starts as gentle beautiful hills but eventually metamorphoses into a mountain region with many deep canyons. As soon as we left the hills behind, our good road turned into a narrow, twisty, gravel and dirt road. To add insult to injury the contract for the construction of a new paved road (financed by Kuwait) has been given to a Chinese company, so for nearly 100 km the road meets construction zones every 5 km.

Up and up we went until we reached the Goderdsi Pass (2,000 m or 6,600 ft altitude), where we stopped to have one of the local sages tell us about the life of a nomad farmer. They live in the lowlands from October to March, and bring the cows and calves to the high mountains to graze and grow fat from April to September. The kids have thus six months of school in the winter, and six months of working vacation during the summer. The population in the province of Adjara, which extends beyond the pass, is dominantly Muslim, but they are simple mountain folk who take things easy and not too seriously when it comes to religion. The Orthodox Patriarch and the Imam are good friends, and often appear together to bring spiritual comfort to their peoples.

While we were up in the high mountain we took the time to pay a brief visit to the local arboretum to admire the Alpine vegetation, where Sofia excitedly called my attention to a display with fossilized wood. Never to waste a good chance to pontificate, I spoke at length about the process of fossilization and about petrified forests. My little speech caught the attention of the Chief Botanist, so I repeated my observations, to which he excitedly added the news that he had also found some petrified leaves. Well, there are leaves and leaves: Palm leaves (suggesting a warm climate), pointed leaves (suggesting heavy precipitation), serrated leaves (suggesting moderate precipitation), or needles (suggesting a cool climate)? He was so excited to meet someone who would take his findings seriously! I need to collect a few key papers and send them to him.

We then went to Green Lake to have lunch. “What is this little lake doing here in the mountains?”, asked Ines. Well, let’s see: 1. No outlet or inlet, 2. No sediments, 3. Lots of jumbled rocks. It must be a tarn, in which case the water mirror is the groundwater table!

Back into our expeditionary vehicles, and a long and scary drive to the mountain town of Khulo, which for some unbeknownst reason has the two halves of the town separated by a deep river canyon a good 500 m deep. To solve the problem of getting the teacher to the other half of the town (plus kids, chickens, and ag products), the clever Russians built a funicular in the 1960’s that has a run of 1,700 m without any intervening towers. The funicular looks 60 years old, has a small gondola that must have come directly from a shop in Moscow, and still performs the 8 minute trip there and 8 minutes back with clockwork regularity. Unfortunately for us, a film crew was on the other side of the canyon and the old man who has operated the funicular for the last 45 years didn’t want to take us across because that would delay him going to supper. OMG! Sofia was all sweetness talking to him, calling him “my father” and asking him to relent “to your daughter” but the old man would not budge. Then everybody started giving their opinion and the volume of the discussion went in crescendo. Finally Sofia lost patience and simply called the Big Boss, who directed the guy to stop making a fuzz and simply take us across. Man, was he pissed off. I had to wonder about the wisdom of 6 of us getting into the gondola with this angry guy, who was all the time muttering under his breath while our sweet Sofia nailed him with a daggers’ stare. But all is well that ends well: The view was both scary and spectacular, and Ines and I had a chance to do a quick hike around the little town before we were asked to come back and join the queue for the return trip.

We made a stop in the failing light of dusk to look at a 1,500 years old Roman bridge that is still standing in the village of Dandalo. It was a short span, but the structure was airy and elegant, and a veritable tribute to some old Roman engineer.

Finally, aching and tired, we got to Marani, where we were going to spend the night at the house of Ladó and Hélika. It was 8 pm, so we were thinking perhaps a little something to eat before hitting the sack but … oh, no … Hélika had clearly been cooking all afternoon for us, and there was literally no place free on the big communal table where we sat with much ceremony. Ladó, who has a voice at least as loud as mine in my best days, promptly filled our glasses with his excellent dry white wine, trumpeted a welcome to their “humble” table, and from there we were fed like only a Georgian mother can feed a hungry pack of children. In the meantime Ladó had established a shouting competition with our two drivers, punctuated only by a new filling of the glasses, a toast to this or that, and a communal cry of “Gaumar Joss” as we downed our wine time and again.

I don’t have enough words to describe the delicious dishes, which included cheese, bean stew, aubergines and other grilled vegetables, three types of salads, cheese bread and a cheese bread pudding, eggs in a rich tomato sauce, and a couple of other delicacies that I simply cannot describe. We were exhausted of eating and drinking, when Hélika stirred the coals in the barbecue, and Ladó took his place as the man of the house and proceeded to grill five “swords”, each holding 8 to 10 huge pieces of beef. This gave him pause for more friendly shouting and more wine, during which he adopted Zsuzsa as his daughter. Half an hour later, when the grilled meat was ready, we were “encouraged” to “eat, drink, and be merry”, until finally I stood up, raised my glass to our host, and in the spirit of creating strong friendship bonds between Mexico and Georgia promised I would join him in the vineyard at 6 am the following day. Speeches and more drinking followed, we drank brotherhood together, embraced and kissed, and I headed for bed. Just as I was entering the house I heard the loud sound of dancing music, much clapping and laughing, and the extended meal degenerated into a wild party. Georgians are pretty hard core.

Georgia 2021– Day 9. Mi amigo Ladó, his vineyard, and his wine

I woke up early because I wanted to be at 6 am waiting for Ladó, but just as I was stepping out of my door he was stepping out of his. In the upmanship contest we had a draw. So we went to kitchen, brewed some coffee, and then proceeded to get to know each other in hesitant but fortissimo sentences. We found no coincidence between his Russian and the languages I speak and thus resorted to the primeval language of pantomime and cell phone pictures. So I told him I was a Geology professor at the university, that I had a daughter who was a veterinarian, and all about DJ and Ronnie. In return he told me he was 68 years old (a series of smiles and back slaps followed to celebrate the fact that we were the same age), that he had a son (he actually has two sons) and two grandchildren, that he had been captain of a tanker ship (I misunderstood: It is his son who is a captain), that his little dog was 18 years old, deaf, and half blind (follow pictures of Phoebe and Loretta) … and after half hour we were ready to continue our loud conversation into the orchard/vineyard (much to the relief of all my fellow travelers, who had followed every step of the conversation as if it had been shouted in their ears).

Ladó has an amazing garden, with every imaginable vegetable and tree that can grow in this fertile land. Annual precipitation varies between 36 and 72 inches per year, so with a little of know how you can grow anything you want. For example, with a sly smile he showed me the row of kiwi trees he has growing behind the wine cellar, all of them loaded with fruit. Corn, chiles, tomatoes, cucumbers, tomatoes, … all grow in abundance under the careful care of this gifted man. The pride of the collection, however, is half an acre of hazelnut trees, and an acre of vines which he has tended for 20 years. I am sure he sings to them in his tenor voice as he visits them every morning, and in return they produce heavy bunches of grapes that he can then turn into wine. Clearly in the last few years he has prospered, because both the wine production cellar and the cave are in brand new buildings. He prepares batches using either the traditional Georgian method or the western method, and he has come up with some excellent wines. He wanted to make a degustation last night, but food and toasts got on the way, so we will have early today, before breakfast. In the meantime, however, he insisted on me tasting his brandy, a cha cha that has been steeped in young oak strips to mellow it out. It was excellent!

The rest of the group eventually got up, and weren’t they surprised when instead of breakfast they got a wine tasting session (at 9 am), a walk through the vineyard, and abundant servings of brandy to accompany the sumptuous breakfast. This must be what Heaven is like!

Eventually we had to say goodbye to our Georgian friends. While Hélika waved to us with a white handkerchief, mi amigo Ladó encouraged me to bring Faby, DJ, and Ronnie for a visit real soon.

We were now coming real close to the coast of the Black Sea, but still had time to stop at a beautiful waterfall and a Roman-style bridge (but I suspect this is a copy made at a much later time, because it didn’t have the same level of craftsmanship as the one we saw before).

We finally reached the resort town of Batumi, which at half a million inhabitants has become the second largest city in Georgia. But before we got lost in the many temptations of Sin City, we visited the fort of Gonio, which for many centuries hosted Roman garrisons that kept an eye on the interests of the empire along the eastern coasts of the Black Sea. It has been beautifully restored, and I suspect that the plan is to convert it into a tourist spectacle, with legions of actors playing … well, legions of Romans. Sofia took this opportunity to retell us the legend of Jason and the Argonauts, which presumably took place in this coast and its surrounding mountains.

We had lunch at an upscale place, where the size of the portions was in inverse relation to their price (I had a very tasty mussel soup for about US$10), and then went to the State Archaeology Museum, where for the first time we saw an excellent timeline from the Paleolithic, through the Third Millenium BC The First Millenium BC (including Greek influences), the First Millenium AD (including Roman influences), and the Middle Ages. Small but very well done.

We ended the day with an excellent walk along the Boardwalk, which is as lively and full of color, light, and music as the Santa Cruz Boardwalk. Sofia and Ines went for a swim, but the rest of us will save our first Black Sea experience for the morrow. I separated from the group when they were planning to park themselves in a restaurant for dinner, and much to the anguish of Ines walked back to the hotel (piece of cake finding my way back) taking in the feeling of the city and munching on a shwarma burrito.