When we were in Tbilisi, capital of Georgia, we took our bus to this restaurant. It was very fancy-schmancy.
A person in this guy’s family found this decrepit cookbook in a flea market for pennies. It was from the 1880’s, owned by a very famous female cook. Apparently when she passed away, her family tossed the cookbook to charity.
It gave this guy the idea to open a restaurant and serve all the recipes in the book. He got several other men to invest and it’s been a bustling business for the past seven years.
He gives this schpeel to everyone who has not yet eaten at their restaurant. We went through a set of silverware and all the plates with every course. I am not a food aficionado, but this was really good food. They admit to tweaking the recipes to bring them up to date. I doubt they use lard, suet or fat back for any of the meals we ate that night.
I tried to video the violinist to prove this was a fancy-schmancy place, but didn’t get much of a view. However I am including it for you to get a glimpse of the number of wait staff and owners who helicoptered over us with wonderful service.
Of course …. tomatoes, but delicious. This was salmon with the sauce already on top of it, which gets a good grade because I don’t eat salmon without tartar sauce and waitstaff always look down on me for asking for it. And again, fancy-shamncy when your dessert is the size of a postage stamp and they add little stuff next to it to make it look alot bigger. I was good though.
We took a city tour of Tbilisi when we arrived. This was the 4th century Narikala Fortress. Our tour guide called it a castle but when we arrived via cable car we simply walked up and then down next to the wall. Not worth the effort, but we did see the Mother of Georgia statue up close.
We also saw this view from the fortress.
The Freedom Monument, commonly known as the St. George Statue, is a memorial located in Tbilisi dedicated to the freedom and independence of the Georgian nation. Unveiled in 2006 in Tbilisi’s central square, the monument of granite and gold is 35 metres high and is easily spotted from any point of the city.
This is a large clocktower made of piecemeal parts they recycled from other historic areas. This and the smallest clock embedded into a nearby wall was somewhat unimpressive to me. But my dad says I’m getting jaded from too much travel.
Beautiful architecture.
The pics above were from the National Museum. Archeologists dug up a lot of gold and the normal bowls and trinkets I see a lot of in museums. The chainmail and costumes are interesting too.
But I really found the skulls of prehistoric man and the full-sized hairy woman to be amazing. Also the fish were huge back in the day. And saw a bunch of minerals and agates like we recently saw in Australia.
The national Museum also had a section about the massacre of the Communist Regime from 1921 to 1971. The Russians came in an exterminated the upper-echelon Bolsheviks and even children.
I am always amazed by how little value people put on other human beings to gain land, power and control. And it is usually with the thought they are a lesser person than I. Sad
Our group slogged through the old town of Tbilisi and we came upon an entire street of full sized bronze statues.
This was a Christian church in the middle of town and the woman in black must have been a tourist because no nun or Christian dresses like that. She’s a little scary to me.
Oh. And dogs. They roam everywhere, without collars and without owners. The government inoculates them with rabies vaccine and puts a big clip on their ear to show it has been done. DUH. I’m not so worried about rabies as I would be of one of those big dogs taking a chunk out of my face! But they all seemed to be pretty laid back.
Walked by one of the only synogogues in Georgia. Each cross is different.
More architecture and people selling their wares, in this case carpets.
I really loved this pattern carpet.
A good view of the 13th century Metekhi Church inside the city.
My panoramic photo of a cool building.
This cracks me up. It was a long hot day and those three would scout out any seat available when Nick started talking.
Yes!! It’s Frank Sinatra. Stupidly I asked if Frank Sinatra was Georgian. Tom belly laughed and said he was SO Italian. But if you could read Frank’s quote, it says “Alcohol may be man’s worst enemy, but the bible says love your enemy.
The Georgians apparently like this idea, since they have hundreds of wineries throughout their country. From the photo you can see a little of their language, their city streets and how the ‘every man’ dresses.
This is the Peace Bridge, photographed from the inside. This footbridge was installed to join the old to the new part of the city of Tbilisi, a link from the past to the present
This is the Peace Bridge photographed from the tram taking us up to the fortress.
This is purely a tourist promotion. M is a company and this air balloon takes people straight up. It remains tethered to the ground and I don’t think it uses hot air to make it rise. It didn’t go anywhere while we were in town because it was very windy all days.
The tram up a mountain is a novel idea for me, since we have no mountains of which we need to get to the top.
Once at the top, this statue was the big deal. It WAS pretty cool. The funny thing is there used to be another Mother Georgia statue at the same site that was smaller, uglier and more masculine. It got old and it was removed and replaced by this larger statue. The current Mother Georgia looks pretty darn manly itself.
Self explanatory. Had a river view from my hotel room.
We took our bus to a place where we were told we would get into two 4 X 4’s for three minutes to get to the winery at the end of nowhere. SO. When I saw this piece of junk, I got a little nervous. But the two vehicles on the right were our ride. The following videos show what was to happen next. We were to cross the river and go eat at the winery/restaurant.
A decision had to be made to cross; or go ten minutes out of our way.
After the screaming, we all decided to go the other way!!
This is just a fly on the wall of how we all got along. LOTS of laughter.
I was afraid wild rabbit was going to be on the menu; but it wasn’t.
More wine and more food. These filled dough balls were new, along with the roasted beets in the background.
Diane was not that pleased with who was looking over her shoulder; but Alice was missing her two cats and was happy to see this one.
And, yes, Diane has blue and purple hair.
We were told this restaurant/hotel/winery was at the end of the line. There were no more roads beyond. And it looks like it.
This is Nick, our Georgian Tour Guide. He sported short-waisted jeans and always had his underwear or butt crack showing. Then every once in awhile he’d grab his belt loops and yank upwards.
I wasn’t much of a fashionista on this trip either.
This place was an abandoned rock-hewn town of Uplistsikhe. It was first used by pagans and then the Christian religious leaders used it. The earthquakes happened and they would knock down several front caves so that the back caves were exposed and came into view. At one point, archeologists found hidden gold and treasures that were left behind or forgotten.
We saw a lizard, one of the few animals we saw on our entire trip. The little girl near Diane was not part of our tour and her father was letting her run amok.
The hole was used to make wine. They would crush the grapes and it would run into another holding hole next to it.
I always get my “mountain goat in another life” photo.
But also note the bongo-like seat I was carrying. It folds down into a 2″ thick round disk that stows in a bag I sling over my shoulder. I try to bring it along when Tom brings his portable stool. It’s very convenient when there is no seating and my back hurts from standing.
These steps were sandstone and it shows how much they have been used over the many years.
We had free time so Lynn, Tom and I headed to the church. Of course it even had a little gift shop.
MORE TO COME. THIS IS ONLY DAY 10 AND OUR TOUR WAS 13 ADYS.
I HOPE YOU ARE ENJOYING THE TRIP!