Springtime in Georgia

We woke up on Wednesday morning to a snowy Mestia and trudged in our walking boots through the ice and slush to the marshrutka stop. Three hours later we were jumping off in Kutaisi, with sunny skies above us and blossom on all the trees. We'd found springtime.

Kutaisi

Kutaisi is Georgia's third-largest city, behind Tbilisi (according to Wikipedia), although its population is still only around 200,000. Since 2012 it's also been the seat of Georgia's parliament. It is the capital of the Imereti region and is surrounded by high snowy mountains, although it is situated in a green valley. In late March we had a couple of really warm, sunny days there and all of us found we liked the city a lot.

Kutaisi's Bagrati Cathedral

We were helped by a warm welcome from Giorgi, who owned the apartment we rented, who got his mate Leo to pick us up from the bus station in a huge BMW which was battered on the outside and pristine on the inside. Giorgi's apartment is a beautiful, ornate place on the top of an otherwise-ordinary block, filled with lovely furniture and two rooms with huge double beds - nice for me after a few single beds in other places! It was just 15 minutes' walk from the centre, which we explored thoroughly over the next few days.

Lovely spice lady

The highlight of Kutaisi town itself for us was the market. Like the Tbilisi market the stallholders seemed delighted to see tourists and were keen to chat. Those who had had a glass or two of chacha at lunch were keen to shake hands too! We visited the market twice; on our first visit we were charmed by a lovely lady selling spices, so on the second trip we went back to buy some from her. On the first visit I was swept away by another lady selling churchkhela, the strings of walnuts or grapes covered in grape caramel ("Georgian Snickers"). She managed to sell me more than I wanted at a price slightly above that of other stalls, mainly because I wanted some anyway and was unable to say no to her.

We also wandered the old town looking at churches, and spent a couple of relaxing evenings cooking for ourselves and chilling in our enormous apartment.

As we now have a hire car we also did a couple of trips out of Kutaisi. On day one the plan was to visit Okatse Canyon, where there's a viewing platform, but our offline map app took us literally offroad down a rather rocky track and then told us we should cross a wooden suspension bridge. We gave that up as a bad idea, and went to see some stunning caves lit by coloured lights instead. I can't tell you much about them as we joined the Russian language tour, and dawdled behind the tour guide taking pictures instead of trying to follow her breakneck pace.

Prometheus Cave

We also went to see a couple of monasteries outside Kutaisi situated on hilltops. Gelati Monastery stood out the most for its beautiful frescoes, dating back as far as the 11th century, and for the grave of the 12th-century Georgian monarch King David the Builder who is routinely depicted around Georgia holding a church in his hand.

Overall we really liked Kutaisi, and toyed with the idea of another day there, but eventually plumped to move on.

Batumi

Andrew in particular was keen on Batumi as a destination - I was less enthusiastic but it's an interesting place and one I'm glad we came to. Batumi is (according to Wikipedia) the second-largest city in Georgia, and it looks like it's growing with endless construction work on various apartment and hotel blocks. The city sits on the shores of the Black Sea just north of the Turkish border and is a popular seaside resort town in summer for Turkish, Georgian and Russian visitors.

The place is slightly bonkers. On the one hand you have lots of fancy hotels (a Sheraton, a Hilton, a Kempinski) and a whole load of casinos, and some really insane buildings including one with a ferris wheel about 15 to 20 storeys up. On the other hand you have a lot of dilapadated apartment blocks, some which look like they're unfinished and others which look like they're falling down. The old town is pretty and well-kept. At this time of year most of the restaurants and bars are closed (or just empty) and the long boulevard running along the seafront very quiet. In the summer it must be packed.

Batumi by night

The city is also the capital of Adjara, which is apparently an autonomous region, and there's lots of signs that the Adjarans are proud of their autonomy. They have their own flag and there are Adjaran public buildings everywhere. They also invented the famous acharuli khachpuri, the first one we had, a boat-shaped piece of bread filled with cheese and a poached egg (yum). We went to a café for lunch to have one in Batumi to check it was better here than in Tbilisi and it was.

Historically Adjara was known as Colchis, and they've found a whole load of beautiful gold artefacts in this part of the world. It's also where Jason and his Argonauts came looking for the golden fleece! 

Sadly the weather wasn't great for either of the days we had in Batumi, with grey skies and a chilly breeze, so we didn't manage to get the full seaside effect. Of course being British and at the seaside we did have ice-cream, consumed in a warm gelato shop!

After Batumi, it's on back towards Tbilisi via our final couple of stops. The trip is almost over.