Our only early start (7:30) took us to the train station to take four hour ride to Kutaisi – after breakfast of course. This batch ends with a lil’ time lapse – choo choo…

Arriving in Kutaisi, we first went to local place for lunch and took a tour of the town. Note the Soviet-era monuments…

One of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, Kutaisi is found on the Rioni River. As one does, we took a walk through the green market, in addition to checking out some public art and random critters…

More of our walking tour.

Afterwards, I took a nap back at the guesthouse, which was followed up with a really great dinner put on by our hosts. Incidentally, the owners of the Hotel Balanchine are related to the great dance icon George Balanchine. This batch ends with a timelapse from the little gondola in town…

The next morning, we loaded in a couple of vans again to go to Tskhaltubo, a spa resort once loved by Josef Stalin and focusing “on balneotherapy for circulatory, nervous, musculo-skeletal, gynaecological and skin diseases, but since the 1970s its repertoire has included “speleotherapy“, in which the cool dust-free environment of local caves is said to benefit pulmonary diseases.” While it still operates, and we were offered the opportunity to have a “procedure,” much of it is in ruins, having fallen into disuse after the collapse of the Soviet Union. This batch includes an old spaceship-styled spa, now in decay…
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Next we drove to another large resort hotel, now dilapidated, but still occupied be a few unfortunate (or not?) Georgians…

Again, we piled into the vans and went to another, perhaps more spectacular example of post-Soviet entropy…

The Sanatorium Medea is another example of the ghost towns of Tskhaltubo….

You know! I have a soft spot for rusty metal bits, peeling paint, crumbling plaster, broken glass, and the art of nature reclaiming its molecules…

Almost adjacent to the sanatorium was the home of the famous Georgian writer Otia Ioseliani which is also a winery/brewery which does spirits as well. That’s where we took a tour – grandpa’s salon is now a museum – with the author’s grandson, and then had a particularly wonderful wine tasting experience.

Here’s the winery/brewery and cellar and art and more…

Here’s the salon, now museum, just as Otia Ioseliani left it when he died in 2011. There were whole cases of his books translated into various languages as well as many pictures and sculptures of the writer and artist. Note the framed drafts showing his writing process at the end of this batch…

Then came the wine, beer, and spirits tasting, accompanied by appropriate nibblies. All together, a top notch experience!

We made it back to the hotel for a nice nap before heading out again for a nice dinner at Sisters. Did I mention that Kutaisi is considered a city of books? In any case, this batch/post ends with a pic of Pavel which I did not take, but merits inclusion herein…

What’s next…?

Find out soon…!