Roadtrip: Tbilisi, Georgia

I'm still catching up on our road trip we did in August, the 4000km is just the road itself, as we also drove within the cities we ended up driving close to 5000km. We stayed 3 night in Tbilisi, Georgia. We loved the city, here are a few of my favorite photos.

The old town has beautiful detailed wooden building, most do need some repair.

Generally the city is very green, I love green cities, makes it all so much friendlier.

The city has lots of beautiful details, we absolutely loved it and are planning to go back there soon.

This was the most touristic part of the city, but as soon as you walked a street or two back there wasn't a soul around. There were not many tourists, hardly anyone spoke English.

And even though we found the people grumpy, we loved the atmosphere of the city. It was clean and kind of magical.

We saw several beautiful mosaic details in buildings, and I loved this hand.

There are also some modern buildings of course.

The river Kura goes right through the city, so you often see the water, the city is built around it and ha plenty of bridges. We took a little boat trip on it. As it was still August and very hot we went early evening which was perfect as we also got the lovely light of nearing sunset. 

Most bridges were old, this one was very contrasting new but I loved the mixture of the old and the new. 

Some streets were like a green oasis, a relief also to get away from the hot sun. Tbilisi was much warmer than we anticipated and also humid, we won't go there again in the middle of the Summer.

A lot of the beautiful old buildings were in desperate need of repair and were empty, I do love the abandoned look but in time those buildings do get sadder which is a shame.

We almost drove across the entire country of Georgia, we loved Tbilisi the most, we also loved its flea market and beautiful antiques :))) I still have a few places to share from our long trip!

Roadtrip: Batumi, Georgia

 

The main destination of our 2-week trip was to visit Georgia. While it is a neighboring country it is on the East-North point of Turkey while we live in the South-West, so it is not close by for us. This was our first time and we went by car so we had a thrilling time crossing the border. It took more than an hour, an unpleasant surprise was that only I was allowed to cross the border in the car as the owner, but my mother had to walk! It was not a 2 minute walk, a not fun part.

Paperwork took a while and after crossing I also had to get car insurance for Georgia. We there soon discovered that the Georgian people are not friendly.

While Batumi is called the Georgian Dubai, we only visited the old part of the city which was beautiful, but again not a single smiling face which was depressing.

No one speaks any English either, the alphabet and language is entirely unique, making it very isolating.

We absolutely loved the old city, we only were there for less than 24 hours as we still had a 5 hour drive to Tbilisi but it was a lovely visit.

There was also a delicious street pastry sold everywhere for a very reasonable price, the dough was very different and light which made for our breakfast/lunch.

I'm always a big fan of green streets and Batumi had several luscious shady streets.

We were in Georgia for a total of 5 days, I still have plenty to share :) 

Vacation Mode On

We are on vacation! While financially the wrong time due to the house moving and all, the perfect time physically as we are exhausted of all the moving :) We had planned this trip before buying the house, or we wouldn't have gone now but we are thoroughly enjoying the break and are vacationing on a tight budget, will blog about that on our return.

Just like last year, we flew into Miami. But this year our flight was at 6am (on Friday) so at the end of the trip we had skipped two nights of sleep and we are only now starting to get over our horrible jetlag. The day after our arrival, Saturday, we planned to go to the Key's right away but not before visiting some thrift shops as we have been missing those the entire year :)

On our way out of the Motel we noticed a cute Church, I honestly felt too tired and hungry to look but Mum insisted. Turned out a fascinating place. Our Lady of Sorrows is a Catholic church, established only 30 years ago by a priest who used to work for Panair so he traveled a lot and bought statues at all his travels.

The church felt like a museum, but mass was about to start so we only took a few photos and left.

 My photos aren't doing the place justice, it was a special place.

So after quite some thrift shops and hours of driving we arrived at Marathon which is in the middle of the Keys, Key Largo is the first and Key West is the last Key.

Although we stayed here on our last trip too we only had two nights then and we hadn't gone to Sombrero beach which turned out to be very close to where we are staying.

We found some beach treasures, and relaxed, it really does feel like a vacation even while our sleep rhythm is still horrible.

About the only selfie I'll take this vacation :)

Lots of Iguanas at the Motel's property. Although they look like dragons they run away when you try to approach.

I find them intriguing and beautiful.

Beside interesting creatures, you can also come across interesting people, like this lady who clearly loves this season.

We drove to Keywest and visited different places than last time.

The beaches are still our favorite place to visit.

And after the super Christmas Bicycle we also saw this artwork of a car.

It had real shells, all kind of plastic figurines, I think it was a Honda once upon a time :)

We've already been here 3 days, time flies when you are having a good time! I'll blog again soon with different places as we are leaving the Keys tomorrow.