Tuesday: We are sitting on the Tbilisi-Batumi train and have discovered that it has wifi! We are in first class and, although not compartments, we are in the first two seats of car/engine at the head of the train (it is an electric train, so similar to a metro-type car). (Actually, I am not sure that we have more than one class on the train as all the cars seem the same.) The announcements are in Georgian, English, and Russian. So far so good. We are underway at about 8:48... The ticket time was 8:45 and the schedule said 8:50 so I guess the difference is split. There is also no smoking, it carries a fine of 20 Lari.
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| David and others waiting to board. |
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| Interior of our car; we rode facing backwards |
All in all the scenery was pretty nice, we were seated on the north side of the car, so saw the greater Caucasus mountains, while those on the south side saw lower, closer mountains. There were only a few stops which were very quick indeed. There were recorded announcements for the station stops, but these only lasted for the first couple of stops. Then we were on our own, guided only by the station names that we saw.
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| Somewhere along the way! |
There is no food sold on the train so many women were on the platform at Tbilisi, selling snacks and bottles of water. As ours was a "fast" train, the intermediate stops were too brief for passengers to get off and buy things from vendors on the platforms. There are sliding glass doors at the end of each car, so one sees quite a way down through all the other cars. Also a glass door separated the engineer from the passengers. The train stops about 5k from the center of Batumi so we grabbed a taxi in to the hotel.
We'd seen on the internet that the temperatures were going to be in the 60s and maybe approaching 70, but still it felt strange to have it so warm. Tbilisi had been consistently in the 40s.
Our hotel, the Mgzebrevi, was tucked away among taller structures not that far from the sea. Our room was on the top floor so we had a view of the city. We had a refrigerator, two-burner stove top, microwave, coffee maker and hot water kettle. The bathroom was adequate although one nearly needed to step over the toilet to get into and out of the shower.
We walked around Tuesday afternoon and then researched restaurants. The Heart of Batumi was rated the best in the city where we a very nice Georgian dinner. Inside it was lightly funky with orange and blue covered lamps hanging from the ceiling and blue vinal covered cushions in the booths.
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| Interior of Heart of Batumi |
Wednesday morning found us searching for a place for breakfast and we must have walked nearly 3/4's of the total length of the city before we found a small cafe that made ajaruli khachapuri. It was only fitting that we had that for our breakfast as it was in Batumi that Marty had her first taste of it in either 2001 or 2002. For those of you who have never experienced this dish, it is a boat-like shape of bread filled with cheese and an egg that gets dropped on the hot cheese just before it is served to you. The filling quite literally melts in your mouth and it is such an amazing combination of favors that it is difficult not to just bolt it all down as quickly as possible.
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| Our breakfast! Yummy |
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| David enjoys his coffee while we wait for our food to be served. |
After breakfast we headed to the most architecturally acclaimed MacDonalds in the world (the design won some kind of award last year and we saw it online).
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| This is it! The very, very modern award winning design. |
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| Drive through with ponds on one side. |
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| Marty seated in the upper level of the restaurant. There are steps to the right that lead down to several other levels of seating. |
The interior is multi floored with seating on each level. The floors wrap around the center where the service area is and all areas have great views! No, we didn't buy anything!
The rest of our day was spent walking and walking. We went along the shore of the Black Sea and into parks and gardens. Toware the end of the day we took the cable car up to the top of a hill: maybe the longest such ride we have ever taken anywhere! The views were great albeit hazy. And the temperature was in the high 60's too.
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| Statue of Medea in an open plaza |
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| Apartments for sale facing the plaza |
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| Fishermen at the harbor |
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| City view from the cable car |
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| Upper station of the cable car |
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| Batumi Harbor view |
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| Ali and Nino sculpture - it moves! |
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| David joining a local couple for tea |
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| Marty ditto |
Thursday we checked out of the hotel at noontime and, since our train wasn't until 4:40 pm, we decided to check out a couple of the local museums: Art and Archeological. They were very interesting and the staff (especially at the Art Museum) were very friendly and helpful. There is also a Nobel Brothers Technological Museum in town that David especially wanted to see, but it was distant so we missed it.
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| Interior of the Batumi Art Museum |
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| Batumi Archeological Museum |
Whereas the trip over had been in the daytime, the trip back was almost entirely at night. Without landmarks it was more difficult to know where we were; at 10:15 pm we pulled into Tbilisi, met Dato and arrived home.
All our photos (taken with the iPads) will be posted on flickr, many are already in this gallery: https://www.flickr.com/photos/significant_images/sets/72157649306237569/
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