According to our hotel staff, it has been raining forever. It’s unusually wet. In Batumi we were fortunate to have one really nice sunny day where we managed to see all the highlights of the place but today as we left to go to Kutaisi the rain came down.
On the road out of Batumi to Kutaisi there was a small accident with a car having hit the barrier. The police were there but doing no traffic control – just standing around chatting while the drivers waited in their cars.
Luckily we were going in the opposite direction and our coach picked its way slowly past mile upon mile of static cars trying to get to Batumi.
The delay caused by drivers trying to jump the queue by driving on the wrong side of the road and coming face to face with our coach, meant that we were an hour late arriving in Kutaisi and it was still raining.
We were very pleased to see that the hotel we had found online the day before – Boutique Hotel Tuta – was fantastic. It even has its own cafe downstairs. We ventured out with umbrellas and found a Georgian restaurant with the best dumplings (khinkali) either of us had ever had.
We chose a plate of grilled veg to complement them because we’ve been living off rubbish like baklava and cheesy bread and honey cake for a few days. Our bodies are crying out for fruit and veg so we obliged.
The town/city itself has a lovely relaxed vibe and we’ve seen more young people here than in the other places. We paid 5 lari to go in a cable car across the river up to an old Soviet amusement park but I cannot imagine there has been any amusement there since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The whole place was abandoned and the rides were rusting. We were not in the mood to pay 5 lari to go back down the cable car again so we walked down the steep broken steps with missing railings and a sheer drop back to the angry, brown river.
There is a cathedral on the hill overlooking the town is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and so walked up and up and up in order to admire its beauty. The walk was steep but when we got there we were underwhelmed by the place.
Whoever deemed this a World Heritage Site has clearly never seen any other cathedral. We walked back to the river and consoled ourselves with a coffee and cake.
Tomorrow is Georgian Independence Day and we have decided to forego the caves and gorge to watching soldiers marching through the city.