Georgia: A Journey of Faces, Contrasts, and Surprises – EP. #9

frafiomatale (78)in #travel • 14 days ago

This is the English version of the post Georgia: Un Viaggio di Volti, Contrasti e Sorprese - EP. #9, originally published in Italian in the ITALY community.

My family and I have just returned from a trip to Georgia, which led us to discover large cities, well‑known international destinations, and small towns not yet touched by mass tourism. We met wonderful people who will stay in our hearts forever, but also some who were decidedly more irritable and unpleasant. We experienced fun moments and others that were much less so. This is the unfiltered story of what happened, and I hope you enjoy it.

Previous chapters

Chapter 1 - Alcoholic Transfer

Chapter 2 - Heading toward the ‘most precious water in the world

Chapter 3 - There’s more than just water

Chapter 4 - The Disney Castle

Chapter 5 - A thousand years of history

Chapter 6 - On the Road to the Black Sea

Chapter 7 - Batumi Beyond the Beach

Chapter 8 - Batumi, the Sea

Chapter 9 - The ancient kingdom of Colchis

We leave Batumi the same way we arrived twelve days earlier. A friendly, talkative Bolt driver — also in love with Italy…

Italy? Belissimo! Pizza? Belissimo! Torino? (meaning the city, of course) Belissimo! Where are you going? Kutaisi? Kutaisi Belissimo! History!

And the crowded bus station, where he drops us off, making sure with the marshrutka staff that there were five seats available for us as well. He didn’t know we had already booked them a few days earlier, but we appreciated the gesture nonetheless.

And so we leave a city that gave us mixed feelings, as explained in the previous posts, and armed with headphones and movies downloaded from the usual streaming platforms, we embark on another three‑hour transfer toward the final destination of our trip.

Our “own” Kutaisi appears before our eyes after a little more than three hours on the road, and after a quick snack at the McDonald’s right next to the bus station, we decide we’ve had enough of four wheels for the day and start walking the three kilometers that separate us from our new house.

Naturally — following the most classic principles of Murphy’s Law — first it starts raining, then it starts pouring. And even though this is our third time in this area, finding the entrance to the house, located in a central zone but down a side street off a secondary road, wasn’t exactly easy.

The house is big but invaded by a stale smell of smoke and marked by cleaning that can only be described as superficial at best. Another round of complaints to the host, who replies only with…

I’m very sorry… I always remind them about this, I always remind the others about that…

And that’s it. He doesn’t even offer to reimburse the anti‑odor spray we had to buy to spray morning and evening on the curtains and walls. It took about three of the four days we spent in the city to completely eliminate that unbearable smell.

_{The White Bridge}

Fortunately, the rain has stopped, and we can dedicate ourselves to a new walk around the city. The “tourist” spots aren’t many, but it’s certainly a place rich in history, since Kutaisi was the capital of the ancient Kingdom of Colchis, an area that included Georgia and parts of Turkey and Russia.

Colchis is considered one of the most important civilizations of antiquity, capable of directly influencing Greek and Roman history. According to mythology, it was precisely toward Colchis that Jason and the Argonauts set out on their incredible journey in search of the Golden Fleece.

Right in the center of Kutaisi stands the Colchis Fountain, commemorating the myth of Jason and those historical times when the region held strategic importance in the area. We’ll talk about Kutaisi’s attractions and its surroundings in the next post, when we head to Tskhaltubo, a place full of charm and history.

_{The Colchis Fountain}