To The Sea

 October 9, 2021

Light show from our room last night

This one is Ammar's favorite;  but I can't decide!

Yoga, breakfast (Turkish) and off to go adventuring!  I've finally mastered the art of downloading Google maps for use off-line!  Boy is that convenient! 

We're off this morning to see the statue of Ali and Nino, a pair of star-crossed lovers made famous in a novel of the same name by Kurban Said (probably a pseudonym).  It tells the story of an Azurbaijani Muslim boy who falls in love with an Orthodox Christian Georgian princess. it is a political treatise as well as a love story and has been published in over thirty languages.  As with all such stories, the boy dies in the war.

Ammar knows me so well!  "Look, there's a door!  Take a picture!"

The lovers are located at the shore in Miracle Park, only a kilometer or so from home (where your heart is, right?) and the weather is spectacular.  I think tomorrow might be shorts weather!  Such a contrast from Tbilisi just a few days ago!  Along the way there's a clothing store with a sale! Life is good! 

The Alphabet Tower

I'm home!

It takes ten or fifteen minutes for them to complete their journey.

When we first arrived we thought they weren't working!  You have to pay attention

to see the movement!

Miracle Park is also the home of the Batumi Lighthouse and the Alphabet Tower and the ferris wheel.  The Alphabet Tower is dedicated to the unique Georgia alphabet with its 33 characters and is modeled on the DNA of a cell. It was built in 2011 and has a rotating restaurant and observation deck.

After watching Ali and Nino come together and THROUGH one another, we stop for espresso and a latte and sit on a bench for coffee and conversation (sound familiar, my church family?) and walk for a bit on the rocky beach, so different from our sugar sands!

We meander home for a break.  Ammar wants to visit his friend for a couple of hours and I need to blog and wash my hair.  Later we're planning on walking to the other side of the port for sunset and the Dancing Fountains.  We should be home in time for Happy Hour at home at 5:00 which will be 1:00 a.m. here.  We'll see if we make it!

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Well, that plan underwent some major changes!! While Ammar was out he talked with some people about the best seafood restaurants and it turns out there's a Fish Market outside of town where every kind of fish is sold and which has about a dozen restaurants on the water.  

The front desk calls us a cab (or maybe it's an Uber;  it's often hard to tell!) and when he he pulls over it just looks like an old industrial park!  There are a few men hanging around and one says, "Oh yes!  Many restaurant!  I show you!"  I probably wouldn't have followed him if I were by myself!!

The beverage menu is a little more permanent! You can see a bit of the 

photocopied one in the top right.

Sure enough, the front part is the fish market;  but I think it's closed for the day.  Behind it, lining the waterfront are so many fish restaurants!  Our guide probably works for Fishlandia, because that's where he takes us.  I wouldn't know how to pick one anyway, so that's fine! We have a large table at the end which is good because not many people in Batumi are particularly concerned about wearing a mask.

I guess we were supposed to have purchased a fish at the market and then the restaurant of our choice would prepare it to our specifications.  Who knew? We chose salmon and shrimp from the photocopied menu, and a liter of semi-sweet red wine.  The whole liter was 22 GEL (just over $7)!!  Cheaper than the four or five glasses we consumed.  As for the dinner, I can't say enough good things!  So much salmon that we couldn't quite finish it!  And the shrimp!  And there were roasted eggplant slices and big pieces of red and green peppers.  And we ordered a cucumber and tomato salad with onions and walnuts!  Turns out the walnuts were ground up and mixed with something, maybe Parmesan?  Superb!

(It's the next morning and I've just realized that this is the semi-sweet red that

I fell in love with on the tasting tour!  No wonder I like it so much!

I was astounded by the size of that platter!

And then I saw ours!

And it was sunset!

We certainly didn't leave much!

Ammar found us a cab on the street and he took us straight home for 4 lari (about a dollar thirty!) Upstairs our card didn't work - I'd had that problem yesterday, too - they seem to demagnetize quite easily. I sat on the floor and waited patiently for what was probably only two minutes, and greeted the bed happily!  We had thought that we might make it to Betsy's Happy Hour at 1:00 a.m. Silly rabbits!!  It was only nine or nine-thirty when we got home.  There was no way we'd still be awake!