Sighnaghi

We left for Sighnghi mid-afternoon from a chotic murshutni station on the outskirts of Tbilisi. It took about two hours to get there, but what a wonderful destination! The town is perched on a hilltop overlooking another less pretty city, with trees everywhere and a lovely old wall surrounding it.

Once we got in, we were quickly and quite aggressively pressured into staying with this woman who just kept saying "....and I will give you breakfast!" Luckily she lowered her price from 50 lare to 30 for the both of us, so we relucantly accepted. Only later, walking to her house did we find out she was Armenian. That was nice. We we able to speak Armenian instead of broken English/Russian/Georgian and she seemed happy also, since only a few other people in that town spoke Armenian.

So, after some Armenian coffee and watermelon, we set out to explore. The town was established in the 18th C. and nearly all the roads are still cobblestone. It's definatley a place for relaxing and drinking lots of wine- its the main wine producing region in Georgia- also, its too small of a place to get lost, so we drank up!


Toastmaster

For dinner we went to this Mexican resturant right up the street from where we were staying and had really good fajitas and corn tortilla-like things and awesome Mexican coffee. The owner spoke English and was very friendly asking if we wanted to be introduced to another American in the town who works there at a dance schoool of some sort and has also just recently bought a house there. We said yes, but didn't go the next day- sorry!

After that, we went back and tried to sleep, but it was so hot, so noisy with the street being right above our heads and the incessant mosquitoes, I layed awake all night silently hating Joe for his being able to sleep and not me.

The next morning I was exhausted and my stomach was crazy upset. But, we did get a beautiful Armenian-style breakfast on the bacony and started the day off by visiting the Monastary where Saint Nino is buried. She is responsible for converting the country to Christainity in the 4th C. The frescos inside the monstary were amazing. There's so many and so much going on in them- you could be there hours just looking at all of them. Also, there is Holy water advertised in the guide book free for all. So we treked down this beautiful shady path and finally made it to this rather unremarkable place where tons of other people bring 5 gallon bottles to fill up before trekking back up. We both got a drink from it, I was hoping it would cure my stomach ache, but Joe said I probably didn't believe enough, and so it didn't work.

After that, we went to the museum in town and saw the little gold lion that's represented on the money here and which was found in the area dating back 5,000 years ago! Amazing. It was a really nice muesum with artifacts from anicent times as well as more recent antiques and art work from French, Dutch and a rather interesting Georgian painter.

A spendid place all-in-all!