We start our Georgian adventure from sightseeing the capital city of the country which Tbilisi is. Our flight from Warsaw to Kutaisi is around 11 p.m., which means that we will be in Georgia early in the morning. We buy the bus tickets from the Kutaisi airport to Tbilisi before online at http://www.georgianbus.com/. The bus journey last around 4h and we arrive around 10 a.m. to the capital city of Georgia. The tickets cost about 26,5$.
We found the accommodation at Airbnb and even though we had a problem with founding that flat when we arrived, by accident we got to one of the lokal bar, owner of which helped us and treated us with fruit and wine. Of course he didn’t want anything in return, and even he would be offended if we had left some money.
Having left our backpacks in the room, we head for Freedom Square at which there is the townhall and golden St. George Statue – the patron of the city. On the way we come across the National Museum, Art Museum and the theatre. At the street there are small stands open, where you can buy many things, including books in many languages. Near there is the Holy Trinity Cathedral – it is the biggest sacred building in the whole country. Going in the direction of the opera house’s location, we run into the building of parlament, after which we head for the Bridge of Peace which stuns with its modern form. Passing for the other side of the Kura River, we decide to use the cable car, located at the Amusement Park, in order to admire the Nirakala Fortress and to have a great view for the skyline of the whole city.
From here you can see Tbilisi old town, colourful roofs of the buildings and the Bridge of Peace very well. At the top there i also the church of St. Nicholas and huge monument of ‘Mother Georgia’, built in honour of 1500th anniversary of establishment of the city. Wonderful views are also guaranteed if, instead of the cable car, we will choose hike.
Going down, we come across a small box in which Georgian alcohol and local delicacies are sold. This is the place where for the first time we have a brush with ‘chacha’ – Georgian vodka. Supposing I can drink Polish vodka, chacha turned out to be too strong for me and only me out of our trio was left out in the cold with a bottle of water. Instead, I buy churchkhela – it looks quite strange – my first assiociation is a cocoon covered with dulce de leche, hanging on a string. In fact, it is a Georgian delicacy made from grapes and nuts. It contains not an ounce of sugar, and it is very sweet, still. Churchkhelas are of different colours and different flavours, depending on the way of preparation or the kind of dried fruit.
On the way, in the centre we call by one of the restaurants to eat a proper meal after the intense day. We decide to try khinkali – little pouch-shaped dumplings. Inside the pastry we can find different kinds of meat, cheese, potatoes or mushrooms. We order five different dumplings, just for try. It turnes out that the waitress got us wrong and instead of five little dumplings we got five big plater of dumplings. So we take them to go.
We try also khachapuri – a very popular Georgian meal/snack which constitutes fluffy bread (it resembles the pizza dough a bit), filled with cheese. In addition, the obligatory thing is to try the Georgian wine – basicaly, it is delicious.
Having eaten, we head for the flat, calling by a grocery shop. What catches my attention is the fact that the shop assistant doesn’t use a cash register or a calculator, but she counts on a…abacus. Similar to that one which my grandmother showed me from her school days. I don’t know why, but it was a charming view, in a positive meaning of this word.
