I arrived in Tbilisi exhausted after a grueling flight that landed in the wee hours. Nice to Istanbul, a three-hour wait and then Istanbul-Tbilisi. Fortunately I had already booked a taxi that met me at the airport around 5am. On the way into town the driver was proud to point out some major sights which I was too bleary-eyed to appreciate. The Peace Bridge, Narkalo Fort. . .it all passed by as if in a dream. When we pulled up to the Hotel Delisi my first though was “Oh no!”. It was clearly in nowhere-land. The neighborhood was residential, a little dreary but safe. I was in no position to quibble. A  middle-aged plump brunette showed me to my room right away, which turned out to be large and attractively furnished with a brand-new bathroom and satellite TV. I put on a blackout mask and crashed. I woke up about five hours later, gulped a cup of coffee and headed out with a map and instructions on getting to the Metro which turned out to be a good 10-minute walk away in a bustling neighborhood of cheap stores and a street market. The Metro turned out to be fast and … Continue reading →

I asked for an early breakfast (8am) to make the tour departure time. Accompanying the genial lady who had been minding the hotel was the owner who swept in like the Mother of Dragons to inform me that I had actually arrived a day earlier at the hotel and would have to pay a supplement. Problems! Before I had even had coffee! “No, I actually arrived as indicated in the morning of the 25th.” “But you arrived at 6.30am and check-in time is 1pm!” “Listen, sweetheart. I didn’t just pop in at 6.30am. We had an exchange of emails about the taxi you arranged. You knew exactly when I was arriving.” “So there’s a problem about the money?” “Yes, there’s a problem. The time to talk about any supplement would have been during the exchange of emails around the time I booked when I could have cancelled.” After pondering the wisdom of booking a hotel where there was nothing around. “Or, at the very latest when I checked in.” When she wasn’t there of course. “Now it’s too late”. She made a face and left in a huff. Took a cab (no more metros!)  to Meidan square to start the … Continue reading →

Today’s excursion was to the cave city of Uplistsikhe and Stalin’s birthplace at Gori. I headed to minibus station around 9.30 to hop a bus for the one-hour trip. The minibuses left from an obscure part of the Didubi station but I just kept asking people “Gori?” “Gori?” and eventually found it. The minibus dropped me off at the friendly tourist office where I got a map and decided to take a taxi to Uplistsikhe rather than another marshrutka as the forecast was not good for the afternoon. She told me to pay about 30GEL (€14) return which I did. Passing along the river on the way to the site, I noticed that the water was quite high, like all the rivers I passed on this trip. It’s not surprising given how frequently it’s been raining. Walking up the road to the site, I was grateful for the cloudy skies as it would have been a long, hot walk in summer. Now this site is not Agrigento even though it also dates back to around the same time. Uplistsikhe was a pre- Christian city filled with temples, built between the 6th century BC and the 1st century AD. The soft stone … Continue reading →