After waiting for a good half hour on a very busy main road leading from Tbilisi to Kakheti we eventually got the first of our rides into WINE COUNTRY! A much anticipated part of our travels through this amazing country. The last part of our journey was with a guy who was so friendly I was certain he would turn out to be a taxi driver and charge us for the pleasure of his company, but no, he was just another wonderful Georgia dude and took us to a recommended guest-house in Sighnaghi where we stayed for the next four nights.
The Zandarashvili family were recommended by the guest-house we stayed at in Borjomi and were incredibly friendly and free with their delicious home-made Saperavi wine. Having settled in we made the most of the remaining daylight hours, not many now Autumn is well and truly here, and walked around parts of the small recently prettified town. We watched the sun go down from the ramparts that ring round part of the town and slowly made our way back to the guest-house for what turned out to be an excellent meal and all vegetarian – the Georgians are big on meat (when we ordered some food in a Georgian restaurant they came back to confirm our order because it was meat-free).
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| From Signaghi, Georgia |
The next day we got up had breakfast and then returned to bed until early evening, I would like to say that we had a good reason for being so lazy in a such a pretty part of the world but the true fact is that my book was so gripping that I carried on reading till the end instead of the end of the chapter like I told Djalma, who eventually nodded off. When we did make it out we wandered round town for a few hours, up an old road and then back down the new road leading into town, we made it just in time for another dinner, this time with meat, but still with their home-made wine.
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| From Signaghi, Georgia |
An early start the following day to make up for such sloth-like behaviour we were out of the house by 11am, well done us. A big breakfast to fortify us we walked the 2km to St Nino's Church and the holy Spring (we took a long detour to this but didn't make it the first time round).
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| From Signaghi, Georgia |
St Nino is the young woman who is said to have brought Christianity to Georgia, which along with Armenia, is probably the oldest Christian Nation on God's good earth. The church was nice enough but the walk there was beautiful, tree lined roads coloured with Autumn under a crisp blue sky.
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| From Signaghi, Georgia |
After looking round the church we followed some proper signage to the holy spring (I think legend has it that the spring appeared when someone cried asking for a favour from the man upstairs) downhill all the way and not very kind on the knees. We found a small room with clean cotton shifts for people to wear while dunking themselves three times in the holy water, Djalma decided to go for a dip in the frigid water to get rid of any possible sins and I stood guard filming it until a disapproving Nun came and told me to stop.
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| From Signaghi, Georgia |
We climbed all the way back up and walked back into town stopping for some soup before enjoying a little wine tasting in a small local wine shop. The wine was nice and it was good to try grape varieties that I didn't have any preconceived ideas about, but none of the wines were as good as the one we had at the guest-house.
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| From Signaghi, Georgia |
We meandered through the streets that we hadn't yet been through and stopped at a few small churches, one of which looked out over the town and surrounding area but decided not to wait for the sun to set completely because it was just too flipping cold. We walked back for dinner and snuggled up in bed before a good nights sleep.
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| From Signaghi, Georgia |
The following day I felt rubbish, apparently fresh air and a lovely walk just didn't agree with me, so we spent the day in bed reading and watching films, we got through Miss Congeniality (if you think it's rubbish, you so should watch it girlfriend), Reservoir Dogs (gruesome but Tim Roth doing an American accent = trés amusing), two episodes of Lie to Me (this series just gets better and funnier) rounded off with Miss Congeniality 2, Armed and Fabulous. We went down for some much needed dinner, a day of hardcore film viewing will give you an appetite, and then headed back to bed getting some sleep before heading North to Telavi, the largest town in Kakheti.
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