Batumi and Gonio

Batumi is a beautiful port city on the Black Sea in the culturally distinct Adana region of Georgia. We only spent one night, but got to see some of the unique architecture walking around. I also ate one of the most delicious kebabs i've ever tried.

After sharing a drink with a hitch-hiking Aussie, we hopped a marshrutka to Gonio Fortress:

Gonio fortress is remarkable for having an entirely intact outer wall in use since Roman times. Different layers of the archeological dig show Ottoman, Byzantine and Roman relics, but it is also supposed to be site of the ancient city of Apsarus, where Jason and the Argonauts landed.

The Georgian Alphabet & Numbering System

Below are the transliterated names for Georgian numbers:

1 erti 2 ori 3 sami 4 otkhi 5 khuti
6 ekvsi 7 shvidi 8 rva 9 tskhra
10 ati 20 otsi 30 otsdaati 40 ormotsi

50 ormotsdaati

60 samotsi

70 samotsdaati

80 otkhmotsi

90 otkhmotsdaati

The Georgian alphabet was once used as a numbering system as well (each letter has a corresponding number). The numbers associated with the letters are shown in the chart below:

Can anyone find the discrepancy between the names of the numbers and the way they were written? The winner will receive some leftover Georgian coins we have.

Ureki

I was sick for 5 days. Look what Sierra did in the resort town of Ureki, Georgia.

So this place was cool cause of the black sand. Although it gets incredibly hot- it's supposed to have some healing powers due to its magetic properities. Also, our patch of beach in back of the hotel was private so there was a clear divide between us and the rest of them!

We also got three meals a day included and tons of crazy fun statues!

BERJERMER

The resort town of Borjomi is famous for the astounding health benefits of its mineral water. The bottled Borjomi water is pretty palatable, but the stuff you get straight from the spring is nauseatingly sulfurous, especially on a hot day.
Borjomi manages to blend the atmosphere of a tranquil resort and a creepy, run-down soviet amusement park. This makes it totally awesome. We stayed at a sanatorium called, "Joint Stock Company Sanitorium 'Firuza.'" The name isn't very catchy, but it is an actual soviet-era sanitorium and is run that way. Even better, we only paid $18 for the night.

We didn't see many of the sights but instead took advantage of the covered swimming pool inside the park. Unfortunately, i misplaced Sierra's pants, and she had to wear my swimming trunks home. Later that night, we ran into one of the extremely kind workers, and she mimed to us that the pants were recovered. Well, either that, or that it's cool to cut off your legs, depending on your interpretation of her gestures. At any rate, we got the pants back.

The next day, we read by the river for a bit, got some cotton candy, paid way too much to see a

papier mache map of Georgia, and hopped a marshutka back to Tbilisi.

Uplistikhe

Just outside of Gori- Stalin's hometown- is Uplistsikhe. It was a powerful religious, political, and cultural center from the II-III c. B.C. until the IV c. A.D. After the establishment of Christianity in Georgia in 337, the role and importance of Uplistsikhe sharply decreased. It rose once again in the IX-X c. when it became the residence of Georgian kings until around the XIX-th century when it was deserted.
The caves, temples, halls and church are all still in amazing shape. The sandstone is great for making cave homes- nice and cool inside. Maybe one day we'll dig ourselves a little Uplistsikhe in America.

Stalin's crap

World-renowned asshole Josef Stalin was born in Gori, Georgia. We checked in at the ridiculous museum he dedicated to himself just as an English tour group was starting. The museum is kept mostly as it was during the soviet era, because it is itself a historical exhibit of a soviet museum. And what would you expect to find on display in a soviet museum? If you said, 'copies of documents,' you were right.


From humble beginnings...

To an enormous shrine! Stalin's birth-house is now protected inside a gigantic marble temple.

The museum's interior:

Funny caption contest!

Stalin's bedazzled accordion:

Stalin's death mask:

...and his bullet-proof train car, which somehow managed to be even more boring than the rest of the museum:

Niko Pirosmani (Pirosmanashvili)

I was able to take these pictures of Georgian artist Niko Pirosmani's paintings before an ear-piercing alarm chased us out of the gallery. That's much more sensible than posting a small sign.