Although I’ve completed my write-up of my trip to Turkey, Georgia and Armenia, there was quite a lot that I missed out and have meant to come back to. This is one of those posts, but the summary of the trip is at https://www.julianwhite.uk/turkey-georgia-and-armenia-final-thoughts/, with a link to all the blog posts that I wrote up telling the story of that little adventure.
For anyone who wants to watch the cable car trip up to a high spot in Tbilisi, then here’s your chance…. I accept that the video filming quality isn’t likely going to win me any awards, but it was a cheap trip that gave a really decent vantage point over the city.
After some excitement of getting there, we were dropped off at our bus for the day, which would be taking us from the outskirts of Tbilisi to Yerevan.
We really had experienced a variety of climates during our trip, the snow bound mountains of Turkey, the sunny Black Sea coast, the moderate Tbilisi weather and then back to snow.
We reached the border and went through the Georgian border control. No more photos here for obvious reasons, but there was about a five minute wait to get out of Georgia. We then boarded our bus again which went about eighty metres before we got out again to enter Armenia.
And safely into Armenia! The staff members here were particularly friendly, this felt like a real welcome to the country.
The country to live….
Much of the countryside was quite barren, but we had some extensive views during the journey.
A brief stop at Ijevan.
Hilly….
We were told that there would be a fifteen minute wait at these services, but that transpired to be over forty minutes. We met an English speaker, who is studying medicine in Tbilisi, and she was held at the Georgian border for over three hours. She had been able to switch to our bus otherwise she was stuck, as her original bus wasn’t going to wait for that long. She had been planning a day trip to Yerevan, but I suspect that turned into an overnight one as otherwise she’d have to go back as soon as she got there.
After a little sit down in McDonald’s being served by a robot (an actual robot, that’s not me being rude about a staff member) we went to find where our bus to Armenia would be leaving from. More precisely, it was a marshrutka that would take us all the way to Yerevan. It’s fair to say that Jonathan is experienced with these, he’s travelled a lot around the region and is more positive about them than I am. I like trains as they’re easier to find.
A driver came over to us and gave our names before he ushered us into his car. This wasn’t the sort of transportation that I was expecting and I particularly liked the cracked windscreen that added to the whole excitement.
With Jonathan in the front, and me safely tucked in behind next to a local, we set off. It wasn’t clear to me if this car was taking us to Yerevan, which felt a sub-optimal arrangement, or just shuttling us to the marshrutka.
I’m pleased to say, that after some exotic and vibrant driving, fifteen minutes later we met up with our marshrutka and I was ready for my first visit to Armenia.
Not that I needed much of an excuse to pop into a McDonald’s, but on this occasion, we needed somewhere to wait from where our coach was going to pick us up.
The interior was spacious, clean, modern and welcoming.
The ordering screen.
I don’t really rate McDonald’s breakfasts much (other than in Poland where they’re lovely), but in Tbilisi, they served the full menu all day as well, so here’s a delicious hamburger. I also ordered a coffee and chicken burger and they were equally, well, exactly the same as they are in the UK, so that’s all good.
NB, apologies if there’s a gap below, the embed isn’t working very well, but there should be a video that plays.
I’ve seen these robots before, but never in a fast food restaurant like this. I doubt they’d be used in the UK, they’d either be kicked over, the food stolen or the entire robot pinched. But, here, it worked marvellously and I swiftly took my tray off before recording this video in case it stormed off with my food and drink.
Our plan for the day was to get a metro service to the coach station where we were going to cross the border into Armenia and then spend a few days in Yerevan. I love metro networks and this is Rustaveli station which opened in 1966.
There was a 120 metre long wooden escalator down to the platform and these are 60 metres underground, one of the deepest metro stations in Europe.
Down we go.
This reminded me of the Russian metro network where they had a staff member sitting down at the bottom looking up at the escalators.
It’s quite a Russian style metro station, but it’s spacious and functional.
The platform.
Here comes the train, which was moderately busy.
Safely into Isani metro station, which was opened in 1971.
A very pleasant journey and it was positive to see another metro system, I’m always overly excited by this. It was a cheap journey and you buy a card to use the network, which can be paid for either by card or cash.
This is the original dome and exterior of the Isani metro station, some 1970s modernist architecture. We then just a ten minute walk to get to where our bus was going to go from.
We had so much good food on this trip, but the one exception was some quite average fare at a Georgian restaurant in Batumi. But, undeterred, I wanted to try a different restaurant which specialised in Georgian food in Tbilisi and we went for a modern and on-trend looking one.
A quirky entrance and I noted that the online reviews were generally very positive.
The interior was modern and combined with a friendly welcome, my first impressions were very positive. It wasn’t overly busy, but there were about three tables in use when we entered.
I went for the chicken tender in Adjaka sauce, which was chicken in a slightly spicy creamy sauce. The server warned me that it was spicy, although this pleased me rather than concerned me.
I liked how they had split the kitchen area off from the main part of the restaurant, leaving customers with an element of mystique going on here.
I opted for the Svia Wit from Svia Brewery, a gentle wheat beer with banana notes. I’d add that many Georgian restaurants made an effort to offer craft beer, it was a very different set-up to that in Turkey, where alcohol was rarer to find and it was usually some lager arrangement.
I was a little nervous that I wouldn’t be surprised and delighted by this, but I was pleased that the aroma was appealing and an effort had been made with the garnish. The chicken was tender and moist, the sauce was rich in flavour with some spiciness going through it, it was suitably delicious.
I very much liked this restaurant, it was laid-back and inviting, with the service being attentive and timely. There was free wifi, which wasn’t always pro-actively offered by restaurants, which meant that I could easily add my beer to Untappd and what more could I possibly want?
This was an interesting thing to see in the sky and I wasn’t initially sure whether it was an advertising project or something for visitors to get a view over the city.
It transpired that it is for tourists, although they didn’t seem to have very many. A trip up in the balloon costs £16 for tourists to the country (half-price for residents) for a fifteen minute ride.
It’s probably quite entertaining, although we decided that instead we’d take the more affordable cable car to the top of the hill that overlooks Tbilisi.
This is the beautiful Metekhi Church, built in the late thirteenth century and early demolished by the Soviets. It’s thanks to people such as Dimitri Shevardnadze that this building was saved, as so many other churches were lost during the occupation. Although the church itself was saved, the fortress that was built up around it was demolished.
The view looking out from the front of the church.
I like the quirky porch way with evidence of some fine stonework and some rather time damaged stone.
Some tombs in the floor.
Some of this graffiti does look quite old, it’s suggested that it might be from the prisoners that were held here in the nineteenth century when the fortress complex was used as a prison.
The interior wasn’t as decorated as some of the other churches that we visited in the city, but it felt spacious and warm. The slight difficulty that they have here is that it’s become something of a tourist destination, which must make operating it as a working church as something of a challenge.
This is an icon of Saint Seraphim of Sarov, one of the most revered figures in the Eastern Orthodox tradition. This specific depiction illustrates a well-known period of his life where he spent 1,000 consecutive nights praying in the forest. He is shown kneeling with his hands raised in prayer, a posture that represents his intense devotion and spiritual struggle. In the upper right corner of the icon, the Virgin Mary is depicted, referencing the numerous visions the saint is said to have received from her throughout his life.
During the post Second World War period, the building was used as a depository for artworks from the National Museum of Art with a large stone wall built across it. This was later demolished in 1974 and the building became a youth theatre. Following political changes, the building once again became used as a church at the end of the 1980s. It’s positive that that the church has survived at all, but the constant changes of usage, including an earlier period when it was used as a gunpowder arsenal, have meant that much of the interior decoration has been lost.
