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: Trabzon, Sumela Monastery

 

I am quite behind with sharing our 5000km road trip that has ended a few days ago. However I will slowly catch up!

Hidden between the green high mountains (at about 1200 meters) near Trabzon is the Greek Orthodox Sumela Monastery (Sümela Manastırı). 

My mother went here about 25 years ago when there was no one, entry was free and you could reach by car very closely. Now you have to leave your car at an expensive parking spot and pay for a bus to take you up and then walk the last 800 meters upstairs. 

 It is not suitable to visit if you can't walk well. We went during high season and it was very crowded, I'm sure it is better to visit in Fall. Unfortunately the monastery has felt victim to a horrible renovation which pretty much ruined it. 

The walk to it is right in the green mountains which was beautiful and the monastery must have been breath taking back in the day. 

I found the amount of people and the state of the place off-putting but am glad l did visit as it is a very unique place and a UNESCO world heritage site.

Roadtrip: Sinop, Black Sea

My first impression of the Black Sea. And it was bright blue and tropical looking. Not at all what I expected. I do know that the weather and area of the Black Sea gives different sceneries.

I absolutely loved Sinop, situated on a Peninsula it was entirely surrounded by the Sea. On the tip of the Peninsula, there was no one and the mountains were high creating a dramatic height difference between the sea.

The town center was full of part of a castle, sporadically shattered all over town, it must have been impressive back in the day.

I loved the parts where no one was present, as where people are, noise and trash follow. The tip was so quiet and roughly natural, just perfect.

There was some adorable wild donkeys just enjoying the sun.

We are already much further away, I'm behind with blogging, hotel wifi is not the best but I'll catch up and show you are high points of our trip. We are now in Georgia, after traveling the Turkish Black Sea coast for a few days it is time to explore this country, which is a neighboring country but everything is so different we are having a bit of a cultural shock :)