36 hours in Tbilisi
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| Intricate brick work in Narikala Fort which over looks the city |
After our helicopter flightout of Stepantsminda, we travelled by car back to Tbilisi to the sister hotel of Rooms Kazbegi, Rooms Tbilisi. It was a wonderful design hotel with a great restaurant and a bar that seems to be frequented by Tbilisi's beautiful people. At one point I noted that there were four ladies for every man in the bar, a fact I stored away for my nephews!
The hotel was a 15 minute walk fro the main town square and the edge of the old town; alternately, it was one metro stop. The Metro was old but functional with very deep stations and large and elaborately decorated underground halls which were common for Soviet era metro design.
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| A mixture of old and new in the Georgian Capital, the silver funnel style structures are yet to be fully completed and have not found a purpose! |
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| The old town below the Fort |
Although Georgia is part of Asia, Tbilisi is a great, small European style capital. A compact old town with a suburban fringe with old Soviet era apartment blocks filling the horizon. As a country on the cross roads for many Empire and trade routes, the architecture reflects many styles and periods. There has even been a burst of recent construction that has left a number of empty, landmark, public buildings.
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| The sausage shaped sweets hanging from the rail are Churchkhela, which are a string of nuts dipped in thickened grape juice |
Our two missions in Tbilisi was to buy some wine and a Georgian kilm as we appreciated both the rugs and the wine in our Hotel in Stepandsminda. We returned to the UAE with our full import entitlement of10 bottles of traditional Georgian wine made in Qveris.
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| The domes of the Royal Bath House sulphur baths with the blue fronted Orbeliani baths which look like a Madrasah from Samarkand |
Georgian wine making dates back to at least 6000-8000BC where the people of the region found that wild grape juice stored in clay pots turned to wine when buried in the ground over the winter. From 4000BC Georgians started cultivating grapes and storing the wine in Qveris, an egg-shaped earthenware vessel used for making, ageing and storing the wine which are then topped with a wooden lid and buried.
Kilms are a pileless, flatwoven rug which are produced through North Africa, Turkey, the Caucasus, Iran, Pakistan and India. Kilms from the Caucasus are influenced by Turkish and Persian style and have blends of floral motifs and vivid geometric shapes. Many are produced for significant family events such as weddings, including the names of the bride and groom and the date of the marriage.
We saw a number of these that were between 60 and 100 years old but we were a little uncomfortable about the personal nature of the kilm. In the end we settled for an 80 year old wool kilm with natural dyes a nice geometric pattern with Christmas trees as a central motif.
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