And Part Three Begins! Back to Tbilisi

 October 13, 2021

My eyelids spring open a couple of minutes before the alarm goes off at 5:30 and I panic!  Deep breaths, we're fine, we have to check out by 7:00.  Lots of time.  Ammar came home pretty late last night, having had some major wins and some balancing losses and coming out a little ahead of the game.  But he isn't going to have had much sleep by the time I wake him up!  There's lots of time to sleep on the smooth-running train back to Tbilisi.

Farewell Europe Square

Farewell Medea

Farewell Neptune

There's just the lightest drizzle this morning and I realize how lucky we've been with the weather!  And even the drizzle has let up by the time our cab arrives.  It's not much further to the central train station than it is to the Fish Market, so it's a short, cheap trip.  For an extra two GEL he takes us right to the base of the  steep ramp up to our platform. (That's less than a dollar!)

I've learned how to do the tickets on my phone and we go to carriage 4, show our passports, and have our temperatures taken.  Then it's right to our seats and we get settled in.  There is free (unsecured) wifi, so I can blog and Ammar can check his phone before he goes off to sleep.  And there's always the challenge of trying to take pictures from a moving vehicle!  The sun is just peaking over the mountains as we get underway. I should have chosen seats on the other side;  but, oh well. The seats are very comfortable and there's a tray table, just like on a plane!

Farewell Alphabet Tower

Farewell sea port

Hello, New Day!

Farewell Batumi Central Station

Each window has a little hammer mounted above it, just like the ones I gave the kids for Christmas years ago.  And each window has a big red spot on it, to tell you where to hit it with the hammer if you have to escape! 

It's about a five hour train ride and our view changes from seashore to mountains in that time! I'm easily amused by trying to capture the landscape;  but I'll try not to add too many of those shots here!

The fence may be old and dilapidated;  but the gates are gorgeous!

Lots of corn.  And I checked, the wheat is not GMO.

Huge power station.  We haven't seen any solar panels or wind turbines.

By the time I get off the train Ammar already has found us a taxi driver and negotiated the price, so we follow the man to his vehicle and pack in all our goodies (Oh my I wonder how I'll get all this home! Ammar brought at least fifty pounds of baklava for me to bring home!)) Ammar says that this trip will be like the crazy cabbie who kept trying to sell us a tour instead of just taking us home! He took us to a viewpoint by a cemetery and that has become a standing joke with us.  Today's driver is a crazy man, too, and when we pass another cemetery it's all we can do to keep our composure!

Somehow we don't die and he finds our hotel.  We're back at the Hotels and Preference Hualing Tbilisi and it's like coming home.  We get to our new room and I knew it didn't have an espresso machine;  but I really thought that spa tub meant jacuzzi, since you never see that in the amenities lists.  Turns out that wrong;  it's just a plain old tub.  I'm very disappointed.

Ammar tells me that he can get us a jacuzzi room for no extra money.  I try not to laugh.  Good thing!!  He calls the young man who checked us in and - you'll never believe it - he gets us a room on the Club floor, like we had before, for not a single extra GEL!  The man is gifted!!  We clean up all traces of our ever having set foot in the first room and the manager brings the bellman's cart to us, loads it up, and transports us and all our belongs to our new abode.   We manage to control ourselves until he's left, before bursting in raging giggles!  Unbelievable!!

A quick visual review for those who weren't paying attention the first time we stayed here!

Now we can really settle in - we've got our jacuzzi, our espresso machine, our five-acre bed and enough floor space for a whole yoga class!  Ammar catches up a bit on his phone, then takes a nap while I try to decide on which tour to take into the mountains.  Too many choices!! I think maybe I've found one, so I'm blogging before I go back and make sure that's the one.

Now that we've got ourselves under control, it's time to think about dinner.  We decide to return to Marani because it was so very good the first time.  We chat with our friends at reception and they call us a cab.  He comes quickly and this man actually knows the way, unlike the last crazy man! 

See the cable car?  We plan to take that tomorrow, to visit the fortress.

We do love this restaurant, even if the menu is on a QR code and mine never works correctly.  This time I can read the code but the menu itself it fussy.  Ammar's is better but still not perfect.  It's always better to ask the wait staff for their recommendations anyway.  I ask about a Georgian beer and he is hesitant to recommend his favorite because he thinks it's a little strong. I'm willing to try anything and it turns out to be wonderful, but I'm not sure it's Georgian!  It's called Black Lion and is designated an American Pale Ale!  And it comes in the most magnificent glass with a lion etched on it.

Isn't he magnificent!

Our waiter brings this little stool for my purse.

Oh so good!

We think this is really meant to be a soup because there isn't
enough meat on the chicken to count as an entree! But the sauce is delicious!

We select two chicken dishes.  The first is a Thai chicken that is our waiter's favorite.  The second is that now-familiar chicken in the garlicky cream sauce.  The Thai chicken is to die for!!  I'm so glad that we agreed to split both dishes!  If I'd missed this one I would have cried! We were told that the second one takes a long time to prepare and will come out later.  It does!  We're thinking maybe it will come on Sunday!  It doesn't matter because the actual amount of chicken on the scrawny legs and wings is negligible.  But Ammar asks for some bread and we go to town on the sauce!  Yum!!  Oh, and of course we started with Georgian salad because I can't get enough of the walnut paste dressing.  

I had told our waiter that I loved the glass and could I get one.  He said he's see about it;  but I never herd back from him.  Oh, well.  I'm sure I'll survive without another breakable thing to get home.  But it sure is pretty!

When we're finished Ammar goes off in search of a packet of some sort for the rest of the bread.  He seems to survive on bread, coffee, and cigarettes.  Thank goodness he has promised to give up the cigarettes as soon as he gets home!  He returns with a big black paper bag and puts the rest of the bread, and there's quite a bit, in the bag and we wander outside to find a taxi.  They are plentiful but I'm glad I don't have to negotiate the fare and make sure the driver knows where we're going!

Pretty things from the cab ride

Our hotel from our moving cab (and the beer didn't help, either, I'm sure!)

The cab ride home is interesting.  Ammar sits in the front to do more research on taxis and he chats with the driver in a mixture of Arabic, Georgian, Russian, English and hand gestures!  We gather that our hotel, or perhaps the whole area where it is located, are owned by the Chinese.  The driver hates them;  they eat dogs and cats!  There's a whole discussion about the Orthodox Christians, which most Georgians are.  And the various Middle Eastern countries.  I don't follow a lot of it;  but it sure is animated and fun to listen to.  I'm glad I'm in the back seat and can just observe.

We get home and Ammar begins filling the jacuzzi.  While that is happening he tells me to close my eyes.  When I open them, he is holding my lion glass!  He talked the manager into giving it to me!!  Another amazing day in the books