Return to Tbilisi: Accidents, World Cup football and Vake Park

We woke up at a reasonable time for once in our hostel in Yerevan, Armenia and had decided to take a marshrutka to go back to Tbilisi. We'd caught an overnight train to get to Yerevan from Tbilisi but the journey had been too short to really get a decent night's sleep and the border crossing had been annoying so we wanted to go for the cheaper daytime option of the marshrutka bus. The only thing that had been putting us off was the awful driving of people in Armenia and Georgia which made every road journey into a white knuckle ride. The marshrutka was very cheap though, only 6500 drahms per person which is about £10 or $16 each. It was faster than the train too as it took a much more direct route.

The train route from Tbilisi to Yerevan takes a long meandering route around most of the circumference of Armenia before it arrives o the capital city.

On the marshrutka we met Jean, a young FRENCH Canadian guy (his emphasis) and had to use the disgusting crumbling bus station toilets before we left which cost 100 drahms a pop and were utterly foul. The journey took about 6 hours but it could have taken 5 hours if we hadn't stopped so often for our driver to to buy snacks and bottle of pop which, when empty, he tossed out of the marshrutka window leaving a trail of empty bottles all the way from Yerevan to Tbilisi. 

Predictably, we saw a fatal car accident just 30 minutes into the journey. There was a dead guy laid out at the side of the road with a black blanket covering him, his feet sticking out from under it dressed only in socks and his shoes lying scattered in the road. It had clearly been a head on collision between two cars going very fast. The police and ambulance workers were still digging around in one of the cars as we passed by. Rowan and Jean saw another fatal crash later after we'd crossed over the border into Georgia that had just happened though I didn't see it as I'd managed to go to sleep by that point. All of this had made us feel a bit nervous and had made our snack loving driver slow down for a while too. 

Thankfully, the border crossing was pretty easy. We all had to get out of the marshrutka and walk across the border showing our passports as we went. We were all glad to be able to use the clean and FREE toilets on the Georgian side of border control, a nice change from the gross squat down things that you had to pay for in Armenia! We arrived in Tbilisi in the late afternoon at a strange bus station and were rather lost for a bit. We decided to walk to the nearest subway station despite the heat, our heavy bags and the harrying taxi drivers getting in our faces trying to make us ride with them to the centre. We made it eventually and helped Jean buy his Tbilisi metro money travel card (the Georgian equivalent of the London Oyster card). Then we took the subway back to Marjanishvilli to our "home away form home" the Bonney Hostel - it was nice to be back and we even got to sleep in the same beds as last time! We went to the expat-friendly bar Canudos for a few beers that evening and watched the England vs Italy World Cup football game and, as exected, England lost - oh well, we didn't care anyway!

The next day we were feeling lazy and it was a Monday so all the museums were closed so we spent most of the morning/afternoon lounging around in the hostel and catching up with this blog. In the late afternoon we walked for ages along Rustavelli Avenue to get to Vake Park. It was a nice wide avenue but a pretty dull walk as it was mainly lots of expensive shops and well dressed people looking haughty - it could have been any posh street in the world. Vake Park was quite nice though. We saw a statue of the unknown soldier and climbed up loads of steps to another statue up on the hill. We sat under the second statue and played ukulele for a while with a nice view out over the park. 

View of Vake Park with its fountain and steps up to the statue on the hill.

The statue on the hill.

Rowan messing about with the uke on the base of the statue.

Me with the uke under the statue.

And with the ole harmonica.

Lots of Georgian flags with a view up to the statue on the hill.

Monument to the unknown soldier.

The unknown soldier with the the statue on the hill in the background.

Then, we caught a bus back to Racha, an old restaurant that had been recommended to us on the free walking tour we'd taken when we'd first arrived in Tbilisi. It was a very local place and the menu was all in Georgian so we just ordered a couple of random things, "ostki" (which means "spicy") and a kebab and we got a litre of red wine between the two of us as we knew that wine was one of the things you should try in Georgia. We hadn't wanted that much wine but that was the smallest size available! The wine came out of a big plastic vat in the fridge and wasn't amazing but it was drinkable. Luckily for us we had an empty coke bottle with us so we didn't have to drink it all and could take the leftovers with us. The food was nice but the ostki wasn't very spicy at all just vaguely peppery. 

Rowan with the food and litre jug of wine in Racha, the traditional Georgian restaurant.

After our meal we headed back to the hostel and went straight to bed to try to get some decent sleeping time in before heading to our next destination, Davit Gareji, a cave monastery near the border with Azerbaijan, that was one of the must see places in Georgia.