08:00
Today I will make an excursion to an old city made from caves and carved in stone, then to Stalin Museum in Gori and two Unesco heritage monasteries. I go out early, Tamo is still sleeping. She lives near Didube metro and mashrukta station. It is a big confusion: van drivers shouting the name of the destination, street market, shops and one narrow entrance to the metro. There is added road construction (basically, they did holes, removed some asphalt but nothing is going on), no sidewalks and no crossings. I take the metro to the centre. The metro in Tbilisi is like in Russia: the tunnels are very deep, one metro comes every 2/3 minutes, and they travel fast.
The meeting point is the travel agency. There is a young, party spirit. The excursion group has an American girl teaching English in Georgia, a South African couple and a Egyptian, the three living in Dubai. Our guide is nice, speaks very fast. We drive direction Gori, few dozen kilometres out of Tbilisi.
The Stalin Museum is old, done in Soviet style with many photos and maps but very few explanations. The house where he grew up and his personal train carriage are in the garden of the museum – the museum building was already built by Stalin, other houses were destroyed. Later we visit the monasteries. One of them I find impressing. In the old capital of Georgia, Mtskheta, it is the second most important Georgian Orthodox church after the one in Jerusalem. Several people are praying inside.
After one hour in traffic, we are back to the travel agency office. They offer us wine (home made, so it is served from plastic water bottles). I drink two glasses and say goodbye.
19:00
I meet Tamo for dinner at a modern nice café/restaurant with windowed walls, not typical in this country. She tells me to try Khachapuri Adjaruli. A dough dish like Balkans Pide, with an egg in the middle. After dinner we go for a walk. She takes me to the “Mother of Georgia”, a big statue on a hilltop of a female with a cup of wine on one hand and sword in the other – to receive the good and bad guests. Eva sends me a message with an article about the snowstorm that touched Bulgaria and Romania. From that moment on I cannot stop thinking about the best option for the end of my trip.
