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Tag: Kutaisi

  • Kutaisi Airport to City Centre

    Kutaisi Airport to City Centre

    After landing in Kutaisi at a reasonable time of day, namely lunchtime, I realised that the slightly late arrival meant that I had missed the airport bus that departs every two hours. There was a wait of ninety minutes until the next one which felt a little sub-optimal as I was tired.

    Out of interest, I had a look to see how much a Bolt taxi would cost, as Uber doesn’t operate in Georgia, and I realised that it was a fixed price of £6.90. This was twice the price of the bus, but I decided to treat myself to this almost unimaginable level of financial extravagance. Given that it was a 40 minute taxi journey and I’d be taken straight to the hotel, I considered this as a reasonable option. Anyone travelling as a pair might as well take a taxi, unless they particularly enjoy waiting beside an airport to save no money whatsoever.

    The driver arrived after around ninety seconds and I realised that there is a little waiting area for them. He seemed very positive and I was pleased to discover that he spoke no English, allowing international friendship to remain within manageable limits while I looked out of the window. I had no mobile roaming in Georgia, so I was temporarily forced to observe the country I had travelled there to see.

    I tried to put my seat-belt on and the driver turned around and said “no need for that, I am a safe driver” which filled me with zero confidence. This is something that he must have learned in English to appear welcoming. The journey proceeded smoothly until he became lost in the city centre, uttered something that sounded suspiciously like a Georgian swear word and performed a brave U-turn in the road.

    I was ultimately pleased that I got a taxi as I discovered that my hotel was at the top of a substantial hill, so not only did I save myself over an hour, I also saved myself a challenging walk.

  • Wizz Air Flight from Warsaw Chopin Airport to Kutaisi

    Wizz Air Flight from Warsaw Chopin Airport to Kutaisi

    After spending the night at Warsaw Airport, sustained by lounge coffee and an increasingly theoretical sense of alertness, it was time for the 09:10 flight to Kutaisi. I wasn’t entirely excited by leaving from 3N as it’s a bus gate, but I was by this time too tired to be much concerned.

    We arrived at the aircraft and I took a photo of the registration number whilst still on the shuttle bus to save me looking it up later. Anyway, 9H-WNB was lined up to take us to Kutaisi and I was on the second shuttle bus so around half the passengers were already on board. There was some frantic waving from the ground staff, signalling that the shuttle-bus doors should remain closed, and we stayed where we were for around twenty minutes. It gradually became apparent that I probably had time for a little nap.

    It transpired that 9H-WNB had just flown in from Kutaisi, but that was the limit of what it would be doing that day as perhaps there had been a minor technical issue that they wanted to look into. It had a nice day off at Warsaw Airport and was then back in service the following day, so this remains an aircraft that I’ve never been on.

    After some faffing about we were driven to another aircraft, 9H-WNN, which has previously taken me from Warsaw to Genoa. We then had another twenty minute wait, by which point any remaining novelty associated with travelling around Warsaw Airport by bus had largely disappeared. One child felt ill and the doors were opened so he could collapse in an area with some space, although he perked up relatively quickly. No-one explained at any stage, either in English or Polish, what was going on so there was an air of surprise about what was unfolding. I don’t really like surprises when flying so I wasn’t entirely delighted.

    Meanwhile, the passengers who had already been on the other aircraft had been deplaned (this is a word I like, I don’t care if it’s seen as American) and arrived in another shuttle bus. This meant that they still had some hope of boarding the aircraft first as most of them were priority passengers who would have expected to get ahead of the non-priority people. My friend Richard would have been horrified if his priority status had failed to secure the expected seven-second advantage as he is a VIP.

    The flight itself is easy to summarise. I boarded, accepted the middle seat with which the seating gods had sub-optimally given me and fell asleep shortly after take-off. The aircraft was full, but the padded timetable absorbed most of the earlier delay and we landed in Kutaisi not long after the scheduled arrival time. I had therefore reached Georgia with remarkably little awareness of the flight itself, which is perhaps the ideal outcome when occupying a middle seat.