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| From Batumi, Georgia |
Batumi is the place to be during Summer in Georgia, although we missed the season by days and there were no open clubs or lively bars, that we found, while we were there. Lots of the town is beautiful and a fair bit looks like it is about to fall apart. After sorting a room in the cheapest hotel in town (naturally) we decided to chance the rain and explore the city a bit. There were squares with elaborate fountains, beautiful old buildings and then there was the Batumi boulevard which followed the sea front for a few kilometres and was backed by gardens for most of the length. The sea was stormy and grey and between then and the border I really did think that the sea had been named because of the colour. We stopped at a restaurant with extraordinarily slow service for a snack and a beer, the snack was khachapuri, a national dish – bread around cheese essentially. The Adjurian variety was famously good although we didn't realise that the lightly fried egg on top was meant to be so runny that the white wasn't actually white so we sent it back to the kitchen for it to be cooked a bit longer. It was delicious though and filled us up enough to not need dinner.
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| From Batumi, Georgia |
The next day we got up early'ish and went for a power walk along the boulevard and went back to the hotel on very wobbly legs. After stretching and showering we headed out for breakfast, walked around some more and found an excellent café which was expensive for Georgia but I had early grey tea with milk for the first time since leaving home so I didn't care. We stayed there all afternoon writing postcards while savouring, in the true sense of the word, a big wedge of home-made cherry pie, it was so good it didn't even need cream and that is saying something.
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| From Batumi, Georgia |
That night we got dressed up, as much as we could with our limited wardrobe choices, determined to find some night-life, the closest we got was watching private karaoke party while trying to ignore the cold on the roof of restaurant by the harbour drinking cold beers. We gave up and wandered back through the town stopping by a church before going to bed, not the rock and roll experience we were after. Nearly all the locals we stopped and asked for recommendations from suggested a new spot 7km away from the centre so that stopped us from trying the next night as well.
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| From Batumi, Georgia |
The next morning we had long walk to a recommended Khinkali restaurant. Having has several varieties of these I can confidently say that I am not a big fan. We had a good long wait between having our orders taken and the food delivered to the table. Khinkali is a lot like Russian pelmeni, except that pelmeni is better. It is a parcel of boiled dough wrapped around minced meat/pickled mushrooms/cheese, and is usually full of piping hot salty water or 'sauce' which can burn on the way out if you're not careful. We spent the rest of the day wandering around town and spent a while on the sandy beach, going as far as a dip in the water. I got a bikini bottom full of gritty sand but managed at least not to lose either top or bottom in the brisk surf, I did not manage to keep my balance though and Djalma enjoyed a good laugh at my expense filming my total lack of grace.
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| From Batumi, Georgia |
We dried off in the sun and went back to the hotel before taking our computer back to the nice café to use the wifi and have salads for dinner.
We decided another walk was in order but my legs at least hadn't quite recovered from the first one and it was more of a joint grinding, teeth gritting mission than anything resembling a power walk. We showered, packed and left for Kobuleti stopping by Batumi Botanical Gardens, a huge area covering an impressive amount of coastline. We didn't realise it was so big or so good or we would have taken a picnic and spent the day there, as it was we walked through parts of the S. America, New Zealand, bamboo and rose sections, the latter was very disappointing but everything else was in full bloom and stunning. We left after a couple of hours not sure how long it would take to hitch to the next town where we'd arranged to couch-surf.
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| From Batumi, Georgia |
We got a lift in an old Niva, full of character, but not with the best driving cruising downhill round blind bends using only the clutch, other people on the road didn't inspire much confidence that we would make it to our destination alive but we did, actually overshooting it to the opposite end of town and getting a ride in a lorry back to the middle where our host lived.
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