29/5/22
When I arrived in my hostel, after a bit of a faffy check-in, I was asked if I wanted to join a wine tour with a sulphur hot springs. Since my day had been filled with travel, I decided to go for it to brighten my day! Back on the road I went!!
We arrived at a beautiful family run vineyard an hour later, had a tour of the land at sunset, before settling down to a big Georgian dinner with lots of different wines to try. The sun made the vineyard glow golden and it was really beautiful!! At dinner, there was a new toast for each new wine, each toast got longer than the previous – apparently long toasts are traditional in Georgia! Also on the tour was the hostel owner (an Italian), a British/German couple, a Dutch guy, a Russian guy, who also served as our translator for the wine tour (and toasts!), and an awful Italian man, who loved the sound of his own voice!! It was a fun night even with the awful Italian!!
After dinner, the Russian guy, David played some piano before we got back in our car and drove quite some time to a hot spring at the end of a very long dark track!! It was pitch black there and the stars were amazing!! The baths were also nice and hot, but they stank of egg because of the sulphur!! After getting in, I remembered I still had ALL my silver still on (ten rings!), but by the time I looked down, they were all already black due to the sulphur – too late!! The other girl, British Caitlin and I got an unfortunate amount of attention purely for being female and we laughed at the fact that every time we switched which pool we sat in, a group of Georgian men also switched – oh, the power of the woman!! I was glad to be there with other chill guys from the hostel!! After a hot hour or so, lounging and star gazing – we even saw shooting stars – we headed home to the hostel. A good night!!
30/5/22
After a communal hostel breakfast, I rang my mum for a catch up. Sadly, it was shorter than intended since I had made plans to go out with some of the other hostel folk and they were going sooner than I thought! We were going to Tskaltubo, an abandoned Soviet spa town, which had been recommended to me by Gabby. I went with a British girl I had met at breakfast, Zola, and two guys Nathaniel and Kilian, one Swiss, one German.
We got a taxi there before roaming around. There were many once-fancy buildings, all dilapidated and now forgotten. We went into one and walked through it, heading for the roof. There was some sketchy bits of walking on corrugated metal roof in my shitty no-grip trainers, but we all made it in one piece, with only minor stress from me!! Afterwards, we tried to go to another building, but the locals had clearly cottoned on to the fact that backpackers liked to come to visit the old spa town and tried to charge us an entry fee to a building that was not theirs. We turned around and instead got snacks and went to sit in a park and chatted.
We gained a friendly dog that followed us and ate some snacks. We moved to a different park by a lake before getting a marshutka back to Kutaisi. While we were walking towards the lake, the dog that had been following us joined another dog and ran at a babushka, biting at her shopping bag of food. She was short and old, but strong and she managed to keep hold of her bag while Nathaniel ran over, shouted and clapped to chase them away. The babushka kept on her way. What a turn of events!! Dogs are wild!!
Once back in Kutaisi, we bought dinner ingredients since the others were good at cooking while travelling and I bought wine. Then we wandered back through the town stopping for ice-cream on the way, passing by an abandoned water park, before eventually arriving home and collapsing on the sofa. Nathaniel and I didn’t move for two hours!! Then we showered, drank some wine before Zola kindly made us all dinner. We sat on the terrace and watched the sunset as we ate our pasta.
1/6/22
How is it June already?! Five months of travel has flown by!!
Today was going to be my last day in Kutaisi, so I needed to see the town itself. Zola also planned to go to the town so we went together along with a Russian guy. We wandered around the town with no real agenda and discovered a biiig local covered market as well as making it all the way to the monastery on the hill. Inside the monastery, they were doing some renovations!! After the monastery, we got lunch in a beautiful cafe with a terrace (of course!).
We parted ways with our Russian pal, when we headed in hunt of secondhand shops. Zola wanted tops and I really needed trainers with grip for my three day hike! I found trainers before we made it to the secondhand shops – got myself a pair of fake Nikes for a tenner!! Then we hit the secondhand shops which turned out to be a bit bizarre – they’ve got nothing on Harborne’s charity shops, that’s for sure!!! After the shops, we headed back to the hostel. I said my goodbyes and headed off to my new guesthouse. I was going to meet a friend, Paolo, I had met in Nepal, who had come from Armenia, and we were going to travel the last part of my Georgia trip together.
The guest house was cute, with its own wine cellar and a cute courtyard. When Paulo arrived we drank wine in the courtyard before heading out for dinner in the recommended restaurant Palaty. We ate a lot of good food before heading home. We had both had long days!
2/6/22
Paolo had selected a brunch spot which we headed to for a fab Western breakfast and then we strolled back to our guest house through the park. There was a lot of bustle in the park, with various stalls and stages! Apparently, it was International Children’s Day! There were sports contests, easels for painting, stalls selling candyfloss and tat, and a stage for dancing and singing. We stayed to watch awhile. We watched traditional Georgian dance, which entails a lot of stamping and bells, some ballet, a few choirs as well as a couple of solo singers. One girl stood at the front and the backing track for Adele came on – I was nervous for her. She started pretty well, but I was still nervous for the chorus! The chorus came, and she absolutely killlllled it – wowwww! She should be scouted – mad pair of lungs for a young girl! When she finished she was cheered very loudly, and I was pleased that she walked through the crowds past me so I could tell her how fab she was!! We left after her performance – how could it be topped?!
We stopped by the market to get some food before grabbing our stuff from the guest house and getting a taxi to the marshutka. We didn’t have to wait long before we were on our way to Martvili!
wanderingwelshie travels 