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.

Armenia - By train to Yerevan

We had train tickets booked for an overnight sleeper train from Tbilisi to Yerevan in Armenia. We woke up quite early (for us) and spent the day exploring some more if Tbilisi's sights. We started with the rather new looking Russian Orthodox church that's located in the next street down from our hostel. There was a service going on when we arrived but we were still allowed in. The inside of the church was ornate as with most Orthodox churches, with lots of gold encrusted icons and paintings of saints. There was some pretty singing going on but we couldn't see the singers. Not sure if it was a cunningly hidden speaker system or if they were behind some screen to one side. A priest gave us some stale tasting pieces of bread and insisted we ate it. Think that means I've ingested a piece of Christ - gross!

Onion shaped dome of the Russian Orthodox church that seems to be currently under construction just like most of Tbilisi.

Arrival in Tbilisi - First impressions of Georgia

We left out hostel in Istanbul on a hot, sticky Friday morning with all our bags and headed for the airport for our flight to Georgia. The flight was a little delayed though we were never told why. Turkish airlines were being as useless as ever. They'd been rude and superior on the way to Istanbul but this time they were incompetent too. On the plane one of the air hostesses kept fiddling around in an overhead compartment and ended up dropping some spare seatbelts on a passengers head! Luckily the pilots weren't as careless and managed to go land us safely at Tbilisi airport in Georgia despite a fair bit of turbulence.


Rowan almost didn't make it into the country. The woman at passport control spent a long time staring suspiciously at his passport photo then back at him. After more than five minutes she got a friend to come and have a look, there was some serious debate then they finally let him pass. Maybe I shouldn't have encouraged him to try and grow that little beard - makes him look like a vagrant!

Would you let this man into YOUR country? I didn't think so!