The most famous thing that tourists like in Georgia are its beautiful mountains: the Caucasus are one of the most beautiful ones, according to many of the lucky, and brave, people who decided to breast them. But Georgia is also sea: located on the East of the Black Sea, it offers a series of nice towns where you can spend your time if you are, as me, lazy to walk too much.
I’ve never been at the Black Sea before, so when I heard my friends would have been there, I begun to seriously think to join them; unfortunately, they had no more space in the car and there are just two other ways to go there: six hours on a terrible Marshutka or nine on a terrible train. Decision was hard: I’ve not a very good relationship with Marshutka, because they’re, according to me, quite uncomfortable; and six hours under sun in one of those “community taxis” is not my best dream. Also nine hours on a train didn’t sound so nice: however, since trip would have been at night, I decided it was the best option.
Bought the ticket to Batumi for 23 lari, we left the city at 22:13: two minutes in advance, I was shocked! The georgian train cannot be called comfortable, but we had one bed each and air conditioneer: couldn’t ask much more. I travelled with four other people, one of them a funny and lovely little 3-year-old girl, who as usual told me anything they knew about Italy as soon as I said I’m Italian: Juventus, Kaladze, Milan, Celentano, Mafia; yes, we’re everywhere famous for this.
Despite the two minutes saved when we left, we had one hour of late: train was stucked in the middle of nowhere, waiting for another one to pass. Once in Batumi, my room mates offered me the taxi to go to the town, where I met Nana and other friends. Early wake up for everyone, we went soon to the sea in Sarpi, a little town on the border with Turkey. Black sea is not black, but water was quite dark, but clean, very beautiful; the same can’t be said about beach: clean as well, it was a terrible coast made of stones that pains a lot when you walk on them.
The place looks like our Liguria, with this kind of beach and mountains few meters far from the sea. There were not many people in the early morning, so we enjoyed our swim very much. As in every beach in the whole Universe, lot of people were selling foods and drinks: I tasted something called tkhlapi (ტყლაპი), a sort of cloth to clean floors, but with grape taste. Sweet and tasty, if you are not impressed to eat them. The midday sun is the greates killer for anyone, so we left Sarpi to return to Batumi and have some lunch there, at home. After a good lunch and a long rest, we walked to Batumi’s beach, few meters far from the house. Here you can find more people, more life, games, a nice park: much more turistic, which means unfortunately less clean and more messy; but anyway very nice to spend the afternoon.
Evening meant two things: searching an hotel for me and going to have dinner in a restaurant. First step was easy: I walked alone in the town, where I could see work in progress I guess waiting for the tourists in August, and I found one place named “Hotel Bellissimo”. The hotel looked nice, but seemed like a self-managed place: entering the door, I had to walk up over some stairs, till the first floor; nobody there. I continued a little surprised to walk up, and in the second floor I found a woman in a room, with a “Reception” sign over it: bingo! Just one problem: the woman didn’t know english. Using my perfect georgian, I managed to get an 80 lari double room for 50: nice room, big, with air conditioneer and the first shower with a window inside that I’ve ever seen.
After I prepared to go out in the evening, I went out to give back room’s key to that woman: silence. I felt like it was a ghost hotel, since she was disappeared. Going down, I met another woman coming in the hotel, who asked me about the owner: we had to wait her together for some minutes, when she arrived from who-knows-where and let me keep the keys, which was a very good idea because there was again nobody when I came back at night. Anyway, very nice place.
Met friends at their house, we went out to find a good restaurant for our dinner: nothing easier, you would thing. Nothing more wrong: after a long walk and few turkish restaurants and fast food, we had to call a taxi to bring us to a good georgian one. Nice place, even if they missed the most famous dish from the region of Adjara: the Acharuli Khachapuri. Anyway, we had plenty of georgian food, even if we (italians) noticed the menu was not so different from the one you can find in Tbilisi (and this made our georgian friends quite upset).
Batumi at night is fine: lot of people around, lights, fountains that dance with music. We spent our evening outside and we returned to our home/hotel for the night, with the promise we would have met again early to avoid midday sun which killed us before. My first mission in the morning was to find the train ticket to go back to Tbilisi: somehow I understood the explaination by my hotel’s owner about where to by it and at 10am I was ready to jump in the water. I thought it was quite late already, but my friends were still home. Since it was a little late, we decided to have lunch before going to the beach.
Lunch at home, walk in the park of Batumi, afternoon at the seaside, with water full of jellyfishes, and in the evening, another adventure to find a restaurant: this time we decided to go around by car, also because I would have taken the train not so late in the evening. After a long search, the result was the same as before: we couldn’t find anything that we liked, so we decided to call a friend to ask where to find a good restaurant. They sent us in a restaurant just in front of the train station: nothing better! The place, a megrelian restaurant, was really nice and food really tasty: unfortunately I couldn’t taste neither this time the acharuli khachapuri, because I had to run soon to catch the train.
Trip was again very long, but this time we had no late and in less than 9 hours I was back in the lovely Tbilisi; at the station Mzika was waiting for me – well, actually it is me who waited her – and after a nice walk, we decided to do the best thing you can do in Tbilisi at 9:30 in the morning: order a Big Tasty, chips and McNuggets at the McDonald’s! Really a good way to start the morning.
