While Tim is spending a few days at the French Esperanto Conference, I am off on an adventure to Georgia with my family. This blog post should have been called "Home to Tbilisi via Amsterdam", but let's just say the adventure didn't get off to the best of starts...

We were due to fly from Birmingham to Amsterdam with KLM after work on Friday evening. The plan was to stay overnight in a hotel at Amsterdam airport, before catching a Georgian Airways flight to Tbilisi at 10.40 on Saturday morning. The Georgian Airways flight was going to be great; we had business class seats booked, with the promise of Georgian food and wine to accompany them.

To start with everything seemed to be running smoothly. We all got to the airport early, checked in our bags and survived the very slow and overcrowded Birmingham security experience. We even had enough time for dinner and drinks before our flight was called.

The gate was announced at the scheduled time and it seemed like the flight might take off on time.... And then disaster struck! When we were sitting in the gate area waiting to board, there was suddenly an announcement that there was a technical problem with the plane. We were reassured that engineers were trying to fix it and the initial suggestion was that it was going to be a comparatively short delay. Slightly frustrating, but not the end of the world.

As the minutes ticked by, however, the delay got longer and longer. It seemed that the problem was with the steering system of the plane. The engineers were apparently on the phone to people in Amsterdam and looked like they were essentially trying to switch the plane off and on again, but with no success. The KLM initially suggested we might take off at 21.00, then 22.00, before finally notifying me that the flight was cancelled.

Chaos ensued. There was only one staff member left working by this point. She had stayed behind after her shift, which had been due to finish at 8, and was soon completely overwhelmed by people who needed their flights rebooking. KLM automatically rebooked us onto a flight from Birmingham to Amsterdam at 17.40 on Saturday, which was no use to us as we needed to be in Amsterdam by around 8am at the latest if we were going to make our next flight. The KLM lady suggested she might be able to book us onto an Easyjet flight to Amsterdam from another airport - 06.00 from Luton was a possible option - but even then it wasn't certain that we would have time to get through passport control in Amsterdam, collect our baggage and check in for the second flight before the check-in desk closed.

We really didn't know what to do. The Georgian Airways flights we'd booked were expensive, so we didn't want to lose them, but on the other hand we also didn't want to lose our entire holiday. If we didn't make the connection in Amsterdam on Saturday then we would have had to wait until Wednesday(!) for the next flight, which would have completely thrown out our itinerary. What a nightmare! Other people on the flight had similar problems; one man was trying to get all the way to Lagos, other people were trying to get to Iceland and were being rerouted via odd places like Belfast and Aberdeen.

Eventually we were led back out through security to collect our baggage and leave the airport. It was well past 10pm by this point. Having researched every possible way of getting to Georgia, we eventually came to the conclusion that the best solution would be to give up the idea of travelling via Amsterdam and book a new direct flight from Luton to Tbilisi with Easyjet. There was a flight on Saturday which still had four seats spare and which would get us in to the Georgian capital just a few hours later than originally planned. We decided to take the plunge, and I booked our seats via the Easyjet app. Helen booked us on a National Express coach to Luton for the next morning and I managed to speak to KLM via webchat and asked them to cancel the random 17.40 flight to Amsterdam they'd moved us onto and promise to refund our tickets. Whether we'll get a refund of the Georgian Airways tickets is more uncertain, though I did also submit a request for that. The airport hotel we'd got booked in Amsterdam was non-cancellable, so that might be one we have to pursue KLM for compensation on.

By the time all this was sorted, it was around 11pm. We got a taxi back to my parents' house and all had time for about five hours sleep before jumping in an Uber to Birmingham coach station at 06.30 on Saturday morning.

Soon we were off on our National Express adventure to Luton!

I was slightly surprised that the coach journey was scheduled for three hours - as in my head Luton is quite a close airport - but it turned out that we were going to stop in a lot of places: Birmingham Airport, Coventry, Northampton, Milton Keynes... Quite impressively given it was a bank holiday Saturday, we did arrive in Luton just after 10am in line with the coach timetable, despite a bit of congestion on the M1.

Our flight wasn't until 12.15 so theoretically we had plenty of time to navigate Luton airport, but disaster struck again when the entire baggage system appeared to break down. We checked in and printed our baggage labels via a machine with no problems, but then when we came to hand the bags over we found that the conveyor belts which should move them away from us and through the airport were malfunctioning. Nothing would happen for ages, then a belt would suddenly spring into action and move a couple of suitcases, before freezing up again. Not ideal!

We were lucky that this malfunctioning had literally only just started at the point we arrived and so we were quite close to the front of the queue for bag-drop. We maybe had to wait for 15 minutes or so before our cases were taken, but at the point we were heading to security the queues were beginning to get enormous and staff were starting to talk about manually carrying bags for flights that were due to take off soon. If we'd been much later, I don't know whether either we or our bags would have made the flight.

But we did make it - finally - and shortly after 12.15 we were on our way to Tbilisi. It's around a 5-hour flight to Georgia and it was definitely not as glamorous on Easyjet as it would have been on Georgian Airways, but we did try to make our own fun with a meal deal...

...and cocktails.

I wouldn't say the five hours flew by, but we got through them and as we got closer to Tbilisi we had some amazing views of snow-covered mountains.

Georgia is three hours ahead of the UK, so it was around 20.15 local time when we stepped off the plane into a new country.

Passport control and baggage reclaim were pretty efficient and we were out of the airport quite quickly. Helen booked us a taxi on Bolt, which seems to be the preferred taxi app here, and we had a journey of about 20 minutes to the hotel, where a staff member was waiting for us to arrive. It's a bit of an unusual hotel, as it's located on the very top floor of a tall building which houses a bank at the bottom. The instructions had been to arrive at the bank, then send a Whatsapp message and someone would come to collect us. Luckily the taxi brought us to the right place, where the staff member found us and showed us into the hotel.

The staff member turned out to not really speak English, so initially communicated with us via Google Translate and then in Russian. I didn't really feel like I'd had enough sleep in the past 24 hours to be speaking Russian, but I just about got through his complex explanations about which key fobs to use for which doors (me and Helen have three different fobs plus a key for our room!). He asked us what time we'd like breakfast in the morning, so I asked what time it would start. It turned out to be 9am, so we said we'd go with that. Georgia seems to be quite a laid back country!

I forgot to take a photo of the hotel room before we unpacked, but I did take a picture from the outside terrace, from where there are some great views out across Tbilisi. This is what it looks like at night...

...and this is what it looked like the next morning.

The location of the city is beautiful, surrounded by hills.

We turned up for breakfast at 9am not sure what to expect. It turned out to be a feast!

In addition to the omelettes, pancakes and cheese pictured above, we also got presented with some delicious cheesy bread. There was way too much food to get through!

By 10am we were heading out and catching the local metro for a couple of stops towards the centre of Tbilisi. No photos from the metro as apparently it's not allowed, but it had a very Soviet feel. The escalators were very long and the fastest-moving escalators I've ever encountered in my life; you have to jump onto them and hope for the best. Public transport here is amazing value and I was only charged 42p for the journey.

We emerged into the daylight again at Freedom Square, the main square in Tbilisi.

It's Georgian Independence Day latest this week, so the square was mostly roped off by police who were seemingly getting ready for the parade and demonstrations. We walked around the square, then down a street with more traditional Georgian buildings towards the old town.

Unfortunately the weather forecast for today wasn't great, so it was quite grey and overcast.

We were grateful that it wasn't actively raining, though.

We walked alongside the remnants of the old town walls.

There were some gorgeous buildings here...

...and in the distance there was a good view of the cathedral I'd seen illuminated in the distance from the terrace last night.

There were some really cool statues dotted around this part of Tbilisi.

I really liked this one, which seems to depict people very enthusiastically doing a Georgian dance.

Meanwhile this street into the old town featured an entire row of statues!

There was a real mixture of characters.

These men on a bench reminded me of Bratislava.

In the distance we soon caught sight of one of the most famous sights in the old town: the clocktower.

This is a strange, somewhat crooked structure, attached to the city's puppet theatre.

We were lucky to be there just before 11am, so we got to see the clock in action when a little figure came out to ring the bell for the hour.

In general the old town was very pretty.

We emerged from the other side of it at a much more modern location: Peace Bridge.

The bridge itself was quite an odd design, but walking across it was really fun.

We were heading towards a cable car station and we got great views of cable cars heading over the river.

The cable car heads to the top of this hill, which is home to the botanical gardens and also an enormous statue called the Mother of Georgia, which you should just be able to make out to the top right of the below photo.

Unfortunately I have forgotten to pack my selfie stick for this trip, but Helen and I attempted a selfie on the bridge anyway.

On the far side of the bridge we walked through a small park...

...and had a view back towards where we'd come from.

We had to queue for quite a long time for the cable car, but once we got on it it was amazingly cheap - about 87p. It was a relatively short journey and before long we were at the top, looking down on Tbilisi.

You can see the Peace Bridge that we'd just walked over.

A short walk uphill brought us to a proper view of the Mother of Georgia statue.

It was built here in 1958 to celebrate 1500 years of Tbilisi.

When you're close to it, it's actually quite hard to get a good shot; from further away, it was clearer.

From up here we could look down towards the botanical gardens, which is where we were headed next.

Entering the botanical gardens cost 4 Georgian Lari each, which is around £1.

We walked past some cactuses...

...managed to avoid falling rocks.

...and soon came to a bridge over a beautiful waterfall.

I initially thought it was quite a small waterfall, but as we walked further away from it, it became clear it was actually quite big.

The Mother of Georgia statue was on the horizon as we made our way through the gardens.

It was a really pleasant place - green and leafy, with the occasional breeze which was really welcome on what was a very humid day.

I really liked these benches, which were dotted around the gardens, and which I think say "Tbilisi" in the Georgian alphabet.

We'd been walking downhill from the cable car station through the gardens, so we were eventually able to exit into Tbilisi on foot without needing to take a cable car down. We continued to walk down hill, passing the town's mosque...

...and multiple churches.

We passed the old bathhouse...

...and saw a beautiful blue building in the distance.

The tiles were really gorgeous.

We stopped for lunch at this point and tried khinkali, Georgian dumplings. They are delicious, but quite difficult to eat; you have to bite a small hole in them, then suck out the hot broth inside before eating the meat and pasta.

Refreshed after lunch, we walked back through Tbilisi.

We passed under the cable car we'd travelled on earlier...

...explored an underground market...

...and emerged into the daylight again to find it had actually turned into quite a sunny day.

We visited the Sioni Cathedral, which is beautiful both inside and out. I only have photos of the outside, as I wasn't sure what the rules were inside. It felt like a very religious place.

By the time we got back to Freedom Square, there was a bright blue sky!

We jumped back on the metro towards our hotel, then had a quick stop for coffee and cake...

...before I sat down to write this blog. We'll be heading out soon in search of more Georgian food, and hopefully also some Georgian wine!

Yesterday evening the weather turned quite sunny for a while and there was nice view of the sunset from our terrace.

Helen and I sat outside for a quick glass of wine and a jaffa cake, before catching the metro back into the centre of Tbilisi, where we had a Georgian meal. We caught a taxi back to the hotel from the Peace Bridge, which was all lit up at night.

Breakfast this morning was another feast, but a different feast to yesterday. We had some sort of burgers, a bowl of mashed potato and waffles, along with boiled eggs.

It had rained and been quite stormy overnight, and it was still feeling slightly damp with a grey sky in the morning.

We decided to go and see the Metekhi church, which we'd seen from above during our cable car ride yesterday. The odd piece of concrete in front of it in the picture below is a fragment from the Berlin Wall!

The church itself is very beautiful, perched on a platform above the river.

From here we had some great views across Tbilisi. Down towards the Peace Bridge...

...up towards the Mtatsminda Park, which was next on our itinerary...

...and across towards the botanical gardens and Mother of Georgia statue where we were yesterday.

We could even see the cable car we'd been on yesterday making its way across the river.

Because it was an Orthodox church, we had to cover our heads again.

Another outing for my Qatar hijab.

The inside of the church was very pretty with lots of icons, but it wasn't permitted to take photos.

It was set in some gardens, which were pleasant to walk around.

From here we made our way towards the cable car station for Mtatsminda, the big hill with a TV tower that we'd seen in the distance.

We had a brief stop for coffee at a nearby McDonalds, then bought tickets for the cable car. The bottom station was next to this very old-looking Georgian house with a wooden balcony.

We walked through a courtyard...

...and then up an amazing ramp which spiralled upwards around the edges of the station building.

Then we off up in the cable car...

...with some great views out over Tbilisi.

The views were even better once we made it to the viewing platform at the top of the hill; we could see how big Tbilisi is.

We attempted to take a selfie with the view, though without the selfie stick it was a bit of a challenge.

The top of the hill is home to Mtatsminda Park, an old Soviet amusement park.

I'm sure it gets busy up there on weekends and holidays, but today it was pretty peaceful and we were able to wander around under the trees.

We walked to a place called Kazbegi viewpoint.

If you look carefully in the distance you can see the beginning of snowy mountains; that's where we're ultimately going to tomorrow.

It was close to lunch by this point so we went into a cafe, that looks a bit strange from the outside, but was nicer inside.

Helen and I tried a glass of pomegranate wine, which was unusual but I actually really enjoyed.

For lunch we shared some khachapuri, the famous Georgian cheesy bread.

After lunch we explored more of the amusement park. I was happy to see these upside down and crooked houses, which I'd seen pictures of on the internet when researching the trip.

There was all sorts in the amusement park. We passed a log flume...

...a ghost house...

...and a huge rollercoaster.

We looped around the park...

...passing some old funicular cars...

...and getting a glimpse of the park's huge Ferris wheel in the distance.

The Ferris wheel was enormous. Unfortunately it wasn't operating today, otherwise I think the views from it would have been amazing.

There was a terrace area outside the wheel with some giant sun loungers and views back down towards the town.

Once we'd completed a full loop of the park, we caught a funicular back down the hill towards central Tbilisi. On the way back to the metro station we passed the Georgian Parliament.

It was an interesting building with some communist symbols on the side.

We also passed a nearby building which had been home to the Georgian parliament in the early 20th century.

Then it was back to the hotel for a brief trip to get the blog done, before heading back into Tbilisi to eat this evening.

After I'd finished the blog last night we went out for a final dinner in Tbilisi, taking the metro into the centre again. We were just on time to catch the sunset.

As we walked towards the restaurant we wanted to eat at, we passed the church we'd visited earlier in the morning.

From this angle it was really visible how the church is perched on the cliffs above the river.

The restaurant turned out to be lovely and we had so much food! Mom and Helen shared pots of beans and chicken...

..while Dad and I both opted for a fried chicken dish with Georgian sauces.

As we were waiting for a taxi to take us back to our rooms after the meal, we saw the church again; this time lit up at night.

We woke up on Tuesday morning for our final breakfast feast in Tbilisi.

We had an exciting journey ahead of us today as we left the Georgian capital behind and headed towards our next destination of Stepantsminda. Stepantsminda is located in the northeast of Georgia, about 12 kilometres from the border with Russia. It's in the Caucasus mountains and so it promised to be a very scenic drive.

We'd booked a driver for the day using the Georgian website Gotrip, which enables you to book private transfers between different parts of the country. We'd paid around £100 in total for an entire day of driving, including as many stops as we wanted. It seemed like very good value to effectively have a private tour for four people for that price. The driver had already been in touch with me to agree a pick-up location, so after breakfast we packed up our final things, checked out of the hotel and went to meet him.

Our first stop, after about 40 minutes of driving, was the town of Mtskheta. Still not 100% sure how you pronounce it(!), but it's one of the oldest continually inhabited towns in the world, with some significant historical monuments. We wanted to see the Svetitskhoveli Cathedral, which is a UNESCO world heritage site. We walked towards it from the car park, through a series of little lanes lined with souvenir stalls.

On the hill above the town in the distance we could see the Jvari monastery, which was going to be our next stop.

We found the cathedral without any difficulties.

Unfortunately, it turned out that we couldn't get inside it.

It was Georgian Independence Day today and there were lots of police and soldiers everywhere. They had closed the cathedral off, presumably for some sort of important service. So ultimately we were only able to admire it from the outside.

We did find a cool model of the cathedral outside.

And Mtskheta itself was a really beautiful place.

I loved the old wooden buildings with mountains behind them.

While we were walking around, I seized the opportunity to try something I'd been curious about for a few days: wine ice-cream.

It was actually really good! Then we set off back towards the car park, from where we could just get a glimpse of the Jvari monastery high on the hill above us again.

Our driver took us along a winding road up towards the church.

When we got out of the car at the top, the views were great but it was incredibly windy.

There was a short climb upwards to see the church.

From the platform outside it we could see the confluence of the Mtkvari and Aragvi rivers.

The monastery dates from the sixth century. We put our scarves on and went inside briefly, though it was very busy with people attending a service.

I really enjoyed strolling around outside it...

...and admiring the views of the surrounding countryside.

Helen and I attempted a selfie, but we were rather hampered by the strong wind.

After the church it was back in the car for another short journey towards a scenic viewpoint, overlooking the Zhinvali reservoir.

The benefit of the wind blowing so strongly was that we could get good pictures of the Georgian flags that adorned the railings.

It was a great spot to take photos  

Of course, we attempted selfies. My first attempt completely missed the view...

...but subsequent attempts were more successful.

I assumed the reservoir had been here for a long time, but a photo showed us what the valley had looked like in 1961 before it was flooded and dammed.

Around ten minutes down the road from the reservoir we found our next stop: the Ananuri fortress.

Within the fortress walls there are beautiful church buildings.

This was the bigger church; it had a really ornate exterior.

We were able to walk a short circuit around the churches, alongside the old walls of the fortress.

Our lunch stop was a bit further on, near a town called Pasanauri. We sat on a terrace, overlooking a river with rather fast rapids.

This part of Georgia is famous for its khinkali dumplings, so obviously we had to try them. Today we ordered a mixture of meat, potato and cheese fillings to share. They were delicious!

After Pasanauri, the road began to lead more steeply uphill. We were driving on the Georgian Military Road, a route which runs between Tbilisi and Vladikavkaz in Russia and which was traditionally used by invaders.

By around 4pm we had reached a place called Gudauri, which is home to something called the Russia-Georgia Friendship Monument.

This rather unusual structure was built in 1983 to celebrate the bicentenary of the Treaty of Georgievsk, which established this part of Georgia as a protectorate of Russia.

The monument features a mural, which depicts scenes from Georgian and Russian history.

More impressive than the monument are the views.

It was fantastic to see so much snow on the mountains in particular.

And it definitely felt considerably colder up here than it had down in Tbilisi.

It was a very busy place with lots of tour groups stopping, but it still a really gorgeous location.

After the monument we had a final short drive towards our hotel. On the way we came across something you wouldn't expect in the mountains; a traffic jam of lorries.

The military road is an important transport route and we were being passed by a series of trucks from Russia, Armenia and Turkey. It seemed like one of them had broken down, causing a significant blockage.

The hotel where we're spending the next two nights is situated in the village of Stepantsminda. Helen and I have got a twin room...

...with a balcony from where we can see the snowy mountains.

The hotel also has a stunning terrace, where we were able to sit and have coffee after our journey.

It's quite a posh hotel, so the price of food and drinks is definitely higher than what we've been paying in Tbilisi, but we definitely can't complain about the views  

It was a beautiful sunny day in the mountains when we woke up this morning and stepped out onto the hotel balcony.

The plan for today was to visit Gergeti church, a small church perched on a hill above the village of Stepantsminda. There are two different ways to get to the church: either by hiking or by taxi. Helen and I decided we were going to try the former method, while Mom and Dad opted for the second method.

After breakfast in the hotel, Helen and I set off on our hike. Almost as soon as we left the hotel and started walking downhill towards the centre of the village, we had an amazing view of the snow-capped Mount Kazbek in the distance. If you look carefully at the top of the smaller hill covered in dark trees, then you'll just be able to make out the church on top.

Some helpful signs informed us that we were quite a long way both from London and Beijing, but comparatively close to Beirut.

The church is probably a bit clearer in this picture below; as we got further down the hill towards the village it was silhouetted against the snow of the bigger mountains behind.

When we got down to the village, we found it was rather chaotic. Crossing the road was a challenge and there were multiple stray dogs, who seemed to show more interest in us than we expected. One of them started to follow us, which was rather disconcerting.

We turned off on a road towards the village of Gergeti, which began to slope uphill. It was steep, but fairly easy to walk on.

And the views really were amazing.

We soon reached some signs, which informed us of various routes we could take...

...and the church itself became a bit more visible above us.

As we began to emerge out of the far side of Gergeti village we passed a field with a horse and what looked like a very young foal.

There isn't very much in the village of Gergeti. 

This part of Georgia is beautiful, but still a little rough around the edges and not quite cleaned up for tourism, as this random pile of tyres perhaps illustrates.

The tower in the distance is the remains of the Gergeti fortress, and that meant we were on the right track.

The path began to lead uphill but was easy to follow and fairly straightforward.

Soon, however, we ended up on a path that was less enjoyable! We were trying to follow some instructions we'd read online, which recommended keeping left and sticking alongside the stream. That led to us ending up on a rather sketchy path down by the water, below the much better path from where I took this photo afterwards.

It was very narrow and difficult and made worse by the fact that our canine follower decided to come up behind me and nudge me with his nose; presumably this was supposed to be encouraging, but let's just say it didn't feel very encouraging at the time.

You can perhaps see a bit more clearly in the below photo where we'd come from: the trail just below the one I'm standing on.

Here's a selfie we took to celebrate surviving the experience and being on a bigger path again  

This path really was much better.

As we walked along it we began to pass some really lovely Alpine flowers.

As we got higher, the path began to get a bit rockier.

We realised we hadn't quite ended up on the right path from the instructions we were trying to follow; we should have been somewhere down there by the cows.

Never mind. There were plenty of other people going this way and it was clearly leading to the church.

Our faithful follower was sometimes behind us...

...and sometimes in front of us having a rest when we were too slow. There was another lady ahead of us being accompanied by a different stray dog, so this was obviously a thing.

Meanwhile the views continued to be fantastic...

...and we continued to pass some interesting flowers.

A sign informed us we were making good progress...

...and soon we could indeed see the church appearing on the horizon.

That was good news because it was starting to feel like quite a tiring climb.

I guess the altitude didn't help; we were really quite close to the beginning of the snow now.

Mom and Dad had messaged by this point to say that they had made it to the top in their taxi now. We were hoping to meet them at the top, but we still had a way to do. We rejected the very steep and direct path to the church which you can see leading upwards in the photo below...

...and instead decided to try a gentler route across a meadow.

The wildflowers here really were spectacular.

I particularly loved these dark blue ones; we think maybe they are gentians.

The church was starting to look a lot closer now.

We took a selfie with it   

We passed horses...

...more flowers...

....and eventually the church appeared to be more or less on the same level as us.

Here it was!

A sign informed us that we were now at about 2,100 metres, having climbed about 300 metres to get to this point.

As we completed the final walk up to the church, Mom and Dad were on the way down in their taxi. We'd just missed them - never mind!

Finally - we made it to the top!

The church itself was very beautiful.

We put our headscarves on to look inside.

The views from up here were incredible too.

We could see all the way down to the village, including to our hotel which is the big long building above the village in the background.

And, of course, we could see lots of mountains.

We'd temporarily lost our follower partway up, but as we stopped and had a rest outside the church we saw him appearing!

He came over, put his head on my knee, licked my hand and then wandered off.

We decided to locate the toilets - so I could wash my hand if nothing else - and we found them in this very scenic location.

Unfortunately, they weren't quite so nice on the inside; squat toilets!

Now it was time to start our descent.

We thought that, rather than retracing our steps, we'd try to go back down via the path along the stream that we'd originally seen recommended on the internet. The first step was a nice stroll across this meadow.

We'd soon made a fair amount of progress and come down a reasonable distance from the church.

Unfortunately, after this point the path became incredibly difficult to find. We could see where it was supposed to be on the map, but that didn't often correspond to anything that visibly looked like a path on the ground.

Helen led us and it felt like we were succeeding at getting down closer towards the stream...

...until we came to this:

A landslide had washed away part of the path and left a hole in the landscape, which was bigger and deeper than it looks in the picture above. We eventually managed to clamber over the rocks and up the other side, but we were not impressed!

After that there was a clearer path, though it still required concentration to negotiate.

We passed some horses...

...and before too long we were almost down at the level of the stream.

Our next obstacle was cows!

Luckily they seemed quite placid and didn't completely block the path. The path was better in places now...

...though still a bit challenging in the odd spot.

We were extremely happy when we realised we'd made it down far enough to be able to see the tower of the Gergeti fortress again.

Here is our celebration selfie!

By this point we were almost back. We took a slightly different path down to the one we'd come up on this morning, which resulted in a final scree slope to negotiate.

Then we were back down at road level. Phew!

Walking along the road into Stepantsminda was a joy compared to some of the paths we'd been on. Now we could see the church high above us in the distance again.

We found the centre of town, where there's a statue of the local poet, Alexander Kazbegi.

We got a seat on a cafe terrace to have a lunch of the local cheesy bread, khachapuri.

That restaurant wasn't serving alcohol for some reason, so after lunch we crossed the road to a different terrace for a glass of wine.

As the clouds cleared, we got a final amazing view of the Gergeti church with the 5000m Mt Kazbek behind it.

We really can't complain about the scenery, but we've definitely had a bit more adventure today than we were bargaining for!!

When we woke up this morning it was another lovely sunny day in the mountains. We had a relatively early start, getting to the breakfast buffet for 07.30 when it opened, because our driver from Tuesday was due to pick us up outside the hotel at 9am. Having an early breakfast actually turned out to be a good idea; we'd gone down more like 8am yesterday and found the buffet completely overwhelmed by a large tour group. This morning it seemed a lot calmer and we were able to enjoy the selection of pastries, coffee and hot food.

We were ready to depart slightly before 9am in the end and our driver was very punctual, already waiting for us outside the hotel doors. Before long we were on our way, retracing our steps down the Georgian Military Highway. Our first aim was to get as far as Mtskheta, the town which had been our first stop on Tuesday but where we hadn't been able to get inside the cathedral we wanted to see because of a service for Georgian Independence Day. 

Along the way we had a couple of other stops to admire the views.

The strange shape you can see on the mountain in the foreground is the Russia-Georgia Friendship Monument which we visited on Tuesday.

It was such a beautiful location, surrounded by snowy mountains.

The driver took a picture of all four of us

It must have taken around three hours to get back down the Georgian Military Highway. The other place we stopped was the reservoir, where we'd also been on Tuesday. It was really sunny today and the water was clear enough to see the reflections of the surrounding hills in it.

Dad and I attempted a selfie  

After that it wasn't actually very far to Mtskheta. This was the huge cathedral we wanted to visit.

Today we were more successful and managed to get inside. First of all into a large fortified courtyard...

...which was quite busy with organised tour groups.

The inside of the church was very busy too, with lots of people taking photos and selfies. It wasn't actually clear whether you were allowed to take photos or not - lots of the Orthodox churches we have been on so far on this trip have said photos are not permitted - but I managed to sneak a quick one to capture some of the impressive frescoes.

Once we'd finished admiring the icons and frescoes we had a bit of a stroll around the exterior of the church.

There was a fantastic view up towards the Jvari Monastery - the very windy church on top of a hill that we'd visited after Mtskheta on Tuesday.

There seemed to be a lot of children playing in the churchyard, so it was hard to take photos that they didn't appear in!

It was a lovely location though and well worth a second visit to Mtskheta to actually get inside.

After a quick coffee in Mtskheta we continued on our way towards a new destination: Gori. Gori is famous (or infamous!) for one thing: being the birthplace of Joseph Stalin. I spent quite a lot of time both in GCSE and A-Level history learning about Stalin - and one of the first things that we were taught was that he was Georgian - but I never thought I'd visit his birthplace one day so I was quite excited.

Our driver dropped us off in a car park just opposite the Joseph Stalin Museum.

We thought the town of Gori had relatively recently removed its statue of Stalin, but there appeared to still be one right in front of the museum. Admittedly, there wasn't any plaque to say who it was a statue of, but it seemed fairly obvious!

We paid 15 lari for tickets to enter the museum; around £4 each. The museum is somewhat controversial, as it essentially presents a positive picture of Stalin. Originally it had absolutely no mention of some of his less positive sides, like the estimated 700,000 people he had killed in his purges, the million people he sent to gulags, the famines he caused in places like Ukraine as a result of his forced collectivisation of agricultural policies...

Today, in response to these criticisms, the museum has been slightly amended. When I say slightly amended, I really do mean slightly amended. The main collection, which essentially still presents Stalin as a hero of the Soviet Union, is up a large marble staircase, decorated with another statue of Stalin. On the ground floor - and very easy to miss because there are no signs to it - is a small side room which presents a few photos and facts about the purges and other historical atrocities. But the criticism of Stalin is very, very limited; the exhibition starts with a quote from Stalin warning people that in the future, people will try to destroy his good name.

I honestly wasn't sure whether it was permitted to take photos in the museum or not, but I managed to get a few. This is one of the surprisingly many Stalin-carpets which adorned the walls of the main exhibition.

The museum started by presenting Stalin's early life in Gori. There were some genuinely interesting exhibits; textbooks from his school days, letters he had written as a young man etc. There were also some of his personal possessions in the exhibition; the below, for example, was his suitcase.

Later exhibits talked about Stalin's career as a revolutionary, which had started at age 15. He ended up in prison in Kutaisi and Batumi; both places we will be visiting on this trip. The boards also presented his relationship with Lenin, although seemed to gloss over how Stalin ultimately began leader after Lenin's death.

The museum building itself was very attractive, with high ceilings and stained glass windows.

As we progressed through the various rooms, we were presented with quotes about Stalin's greatness from world leaders such as Churchill, Roosevelt and de Gaulle (the context was in the aftermath of the Second World War). The trophy displayed here was a "thank you" from the people of Hungary for their liberation by Stalin.

There was an extensive collection of the gifts which had been presented to Stalin by other countries around the world. Some of them were very elaborate.

There were lots of really interesting photos in the exhibition, showing pictures of both Stalin and Lenin which we'd never seen before in textbooks, as well as some of the very famous pictures which we did recognise. The picture below was particularly fascinating; a photo of Stalin as he really looked, complete with pock marks around his jaw. He had acquired these following a bout of smallpox as a child in Gori. However, in official Soviet photographs they were usually airbrushed out.

The end of the exhibition dealt with Stalin's death and the aftermath. The picture below shows people turning out in Wenceslas Square in Prague to mourn Stalin in 1953. There was a good turnout, but unclear whether attendance was optional!

It was a genuinely fascinating, if controversial, place and I lost all sense of time when we were in there. Once we eventually got to the end of the exhibits, we made our way back down the grand staircase.

We grabbed a quick bready snack in a nearby cafe for lunch, but there was one thing on our bucket list which we hadn't managed to do yet; get inside Stalin's train carriage.

Stalin didn't like flying, so he used this bulletproof train carriage to travel around. It took him to places as far afield as Potsdam and Tehran.

We thought our tickets ought to allow us to see inside, but when we tried the doors they were locked. After lunch we worked up the courage to go back to the museum and ask. Mom found a man who allowed us to join onto the back of a guided tour which would give us access.

It's genuinely quite unclear how this works, as there are no obvious signs explaining in the museum, but you can only access the train carriage with a member of staff. Once inside, you could see Stalin's bedroom and ensuite bathroom (he had an actual bath on his train!) as well as his conference room and some smaller bedrooms which looked like they might have been for staff. I didn't take any photos inside in case I got into trouble with the tour guide!

The other attraction in the garden outside the museum is the house Stalin was born in. Unfortunately, there was some construction work going on around it today so we didn't get a very clear view of it.

After that it was back to our very patient taxi driver, who drove us the remaining two hours to our ultimate destination for this evening: Kutaisi. We're staying in a hotel right next to the big river that flows through the town. And when I say right next to the river, this is the view from mine and Helen's balcony!

Unfortunately I've picked up a bit of a cold so I'm going to have an early night, in the hope of feeling a bit better tomorrow for a proper exploration of Kutaisi.

When we woke up this morning in Kutaisi we found it was wet outside. Very wet.

We went down to explore breakfast in the hotel. The owner is overly friendly and demanded to have my phone to take a picture of us during breakfast. I was in the middle of chewing an incredibly dry bean pastry, so this was not really a good time, but he was undeterred.

Our plan was to head out and start exploring Kutaisi at 10am. When 10am came around, however, the rain was so strong that we decided to wait around until 10.30 to see whether things improved. The wait was livened up by a sudden power cut in the hotel! But the rain did lighten up a little bit, so we set off.

We walked up the road our hotel is off, then crossed the road via a zebra crossing decorated with flowers.

We were then in a central park, which was damp but very pretty.

We took shelter under this columned structure...

...to take photos of the Colchis fountain, whose design is inspired by jewellery found at archaeological sites around Georgia.

It's very interesting but it's in the middle of a traffic island on a busy road, so it was a bit challenging to get good pictures of it.

The other attractive building in this square is a theatre. Again, difficult to get a good photo of it without cars in, which is why it looks like I've missed the bottom of it off.

We took shelter in a McDonalds on the other side of the square, so I could get an iced coffee to help my throat. Luckily there was a McDonalds sign in the Latin alphabet as well as the Georgian alphabet, because we would definitely not have known where we were from this sign alone!

As we came out of McDonalds and walked past the theatre again, I realised we could see Kutaisi's cathedral - the Bagrati cathedral - on a hill slightly outside the town centre. That was going to be one of our destinations for today.

But first, we walked into the park...

...admired random monuments in it...

...and took a rather damp selfie.

It was actually a really nice park; I'm sure it would be lovely on a sunnier day.

We explored the local market, then crossed to the other side of the river via a bridge called the Chain Bridge.

The river was looking increasingly angry with all the rain.

Once we were on the other side of the river we began walking upwards towards the cathedral and soon had some nice views back down towards the town.

The road was steep and winding.

We passed a wine cellar which was advertising wine in multiple different languages.

A sign on the wall confirmed that we were heading in the right direction, as we continued to climb upwards.

When we finally got to the cathedral, it was impressive.

The cathedral was originally built here in the 11th century, but suffered a lot of damage over the centuries (in particular being blown up by the Ottomans).

Today it has been restored and we were able to go inside and admire more beautiful icons.  There would have been great views of Kutaisi from up here if the weather had been better.

By the time we'd finished exploring the cathedral it was so wet that we decided to get a taxi back into the centre of Kutaisi for lunch rather than walk back down. We thought the McDonalds we'd been to earlier would be a good location to choose as our destination, as it was pretty central. Helen booked for us via the Bolt app, which unfortunately auto-suggested a McDonalds which was a few kilometres outside the town centre. We only realised once we were sitting in the taxi and the journey began to take slightly longer than we expected... Never mind, we got an interesting tour around the suburbs of Kutaisi, then booked a second taxi back to the correct McDonalds. This second driver attempted some small-talk with me in Russian, so that was interesting!

Once back in the centre of Kutaisi, we went to a restaurant recommended by the hotel owner. Helen had khinkali dumplings filled with mushrooms, while Mom and I shared kubdari, a sort of bready pie filled with meat.  Dad's meal was similar, but filled with beans and topped with ham.

It was all very filling! The rain had really picked up while we were having lunch and when we ventured outside again, it felt like the roads had turned into rivers.

There doesn't seem to be a very sophisticated drainage system in Georgia, so water was running down drainpipes and then literally pouring out into the streets, flooding the pavements.

While Mom and Dad ventured into a shopping centre, Helen and I went back to the hotel to spend the afternoon attempting to dry out our clothes...!

It had dried up a little bit in Kutaisi yesterday evening, but when we woke up this morning it was pouring with rain again. The water level in the river outside our hotel was really high.

There were quite big waves in the river!

We had a driver booked at 10am to take us from Kutaisi to our final destination for this trip: Batumi. Compared to the other journeys we've done, this one was comparatively short; around 2.5 hours. For the first half of the journey it continued to rain, but as we got closer to the coast the weather began to clear up and by the time we arrived in Batumi it was positively sunny. We got our first glimpses of the Black Sea and the tall buildings of Batumi from the taxi.

It was around half 12 when we were dropped off in front of our hotel; obviously too early to check in. I'd asked in advance whether we could leave our bags at reception while we waited for our rooms to be ready, which the hotel had said was fine. When we went in, things were better than I expected because the receptionist said that the rooms were being cleaned, but that they're be ready in an hour and we could come back to check in properly then.

The hotel is in the old town, so having left the bags we had a stroll along its little streets.

We soon found ourselves somewhere which felt like it was trying to be a square in Italy.

This is Batumi Piazza. It has a very large clock tower...

...and a very large mosaic, which tourists were posing for photos on.

We sat in a cafe in the square and had coffee and pancakes for lunch.

From the edge of the square there was a beautiful view of a Greek Orthodox church in the foreground, plus a glimpse of one of Batumi's more unusual buildings - the Alphabetic Tower - in the distance. More photos of that later!

Around half one we went back to the hotel to check in properly. The hotel wanted payment in cash, so I had asked whether we could pay in Euros, as the cost of two rooms for three nights was quite a big amount to change into Georgian lari. The receptionist said that was fine and offered us a discount if we cancelled the reservation on booking.com. Obviously not strictly above board, but we saved about £40 and a bit of inconvenience in changing money!

The rooms are fine and we were excited to find we had some Azerbaijani tea bags. We tried them and they were quite nice

After unpacking and having a bit of a rest, we set out to explore some more of Batumi.

Almost immediately we got a view of another famous building in the distance; the Batumi tower.

We were walking towards a place called Europe Square.

It's... slightly odd. In the middle is a grassy area with grass and palm trees, which looked pretty in the sunshine.

On the other side is this Astronomical Clock Tower, which was apparently built in 2010. 

It looks a bit like it's trying to rip off somewhere in central Europe - maybe Prague?

The rest of the square was pleasant though and it was so nice to be seeing it with a blue sky after all the rain of yesterday!

We walked towards the coast and the skyline which makes Batumi known as the Dubai of Georgia.

From here we got a better view of the Batumi Tower, one of the highest buildings in Georgia, which has a small ferris wheel embedded into the side of it. The reason for this is not clear.

Further away, we could see the Alphabetic Tower, so called because the letters of the Georgian alphabet spiral around it.

We also found the Radisson hotel; looking at this one makes you feel like you might have drunk too much Georgian wine!

We walked down a wide boulevard, lined with fountains.

There were some really nice bits of park; this area had a huge plantation of bamboo.

And we even found some swing chairs to relax in

We passed what seemed like a fake Parthenon...

...and then we were finally at the Black Sea!

The beaches here are very pebbly. I definitely don't think you'd want to lie down and sunbathe on them!

There's a promenade along the sea front though, which we walked part of the way along.

There were all sorts of things to capture our attention, from a playground that seemed to feature a Transformer...

...to what we think is an "I love Batumi" sign in the Georgian alphabet.

Mom took a picture of me and Helen with it

As we got further along the promenade, we could see the Alphabetic Tower more clearly.

I was very excited by it, so Helen took my picture with it   

In the distance we could also see a lighthouse and a giant Ferris Wheel.

When we reached the end of this section of promenade, we got to a famous statue called Ali and Nino, which depicts a local pair of star-crossed lovers. The statue is unusual in that it moves.

So here you can see the pair getting closer...

...then completely merging into each other...

...before the figures start to move out the opposite side of each other...

....and are soon far apart again.

The figures don't move constantly, so it was just a pure fluke that we were there at the right time to witness them! 

This part of the promenade was rather noise; it felt more like the Blackpool of Georgia rather than the Dubai. There were various men trying to convince us in Russian that we wanted to go on their yachts. And very loud party music blaring out. We decided to do something spontaneous and bought tickets for the Ferriss Wheel.

The views as we slowing moved upwards were amazing. In one direction we could see the Alphabetic Tower...

...while in the other we could admire the Black Sea coast.

We could also see over the Piazza Square with its strange tower where we'd had our pancakes earlier.

From this angle you could perhaps see a bit more why Batumi gets its "Dubai" label.

I had a fun time anyway

Getting on and off the Ferris Wheel was a bit of a challenge but we managed it, then used the tower in Piazza Square as a landmark to navigate our way back towards the hotel.

Batumi is definitely an interesting place - I'm looking forward to exploring more of it tomorrow  

When we went out for dinner last night in Batumi, we ended up in a Georgian restaurant which served the most enormous glasses of Aperol Spritz ever.

As we were walking back towards the hotel after eating, our attention was caught by some pictures of old Batumi on the wall of another restaurant.

Imagine my surprise when I realised that the narrative on the pictures was partly in Esperanto.

I've got absolutely no idea why - there's no obvious connection between Batumi and Esperanto - but it was cool to see!

When we woke up this morning, the weather was definitely not as good as it had been yesterday. The sky was grey and our weather apps were threatening showers in the morning.

We went out for a walk anyway, making our way down the promenade where we'd been strolling yesterday. Everywhere was much quieter this morning than it had been yesterday evening.

We passed all the famous towers again...

...and walked alongside the Black Sea, which looked rather bleak this morning.

There were plenty of statues and sculptures to liven things up though.

Proceedings were also livened up by the stray dogs, a group of whom came charging along, barking and chasing a man on an electric bicycle. They did not seem to like it!

We passed a very bright blue building, which seemed to be something to do with the university...

...and then the weather began to take a turn for the worse.

When I say it rained, I really mean it rained.

If you looked out to sea it was still quite bright...

...but inland the rain was pouring down torrentially and we got completely drenched; needing to wring water out of your socks kind of drenched!

There was nowhere really to shelter so we continued making our way along the promenade, past more tall buildings.

The reason we were walking in this direction was because I wanted to see a specific McDonalds in Batumi. It's won awards for its modern architecture and I even watched a video which said it was the best building in Batumi. When we reached it, we were very wet... and rather underwhelmed.

Never mind, we'd found it now and at least it was somewhere to go inside, dry out for a bit and get coffee.

By the time we'd had coffee, the weather had cleared up dramatically and the McDonalds building did look significantly better in the sunshine.

In fact, everywhere looked a lot better in the sunshine.

While Mom and Dad went back to the hotel in a taxi to dry out their shoes, Helen and I went to explore a bit more of Batumi.

First of all we walked along this artificial lake, lined by tall buildings.

We walked past Batumi's aquarium, where there is a dolphin mosaic.

Then we progressed to this second lake, which is actually natural. Probably one of the few natural things in Batumi!

It was very pretty there and amazing how much the weather had improved within just a couple of hours.

We strolled through a park...

...and came to one of Batumi's most unusual landmarks.

This is the Octopus - also known as Cafe Fantasy - which was constructed in the 1970s.

It's a mosaic sculpture, which features fish, seahorses and other sea creatures.

Helen managed to climb up onto part of it for a photo...

...and convinced me to try too.

We took a selfie as well

From the Octopus we had a view of the blue university building, as well as some of the modern hotels.

We continued walking through a park, past these and back in the direction of our hotel.

We came to a large wooden building...

...which seemed to be some sort of cultural establishment.

Pretty soon we found ourselves back at the fake parthenon where we'd been yesterday.

We walked past the fountains...

...past the fake clock tower in Europe Square...

...and past a rather pretty Armenian Church.

Then we were back at the hotel, where we were able to attempt to dry out those of our things which hadn't already dried in the sun. My currency had all got rather wet, so I spent some time holding individual Euro notes under a hair dryer.

While we were doing all this, Mom and Dad had already dried off and gone on their own adventure, up on a cable car above Batumi.

We followed in their footsteps, passing Batumi's only mosque...

...and then getting to the cable car station. We bought our tickets and got in the queue to board the gondolas. They were quite large gondolas, which could seat six or eight people. Two Indian men, who had been queuing in front of us, got into an empty gondola and we went to follow them, but the cable car attendant held us back saying "пять женщин" (five women) in Russian. We were slightly confused, but it turned out that he wanted us to get in the next gondola with three girls from Germany. Is gender segregation in cable cars a thing in Georgia?!

Anyway, eventually we were on our way!

When we got to the top there was a little church...

...and amazing views down over Batumi.

In one direction we could look towards the mountains outside the city...

...while in the other we could see all the big towers we'd been walking past down below.

It was a really stunning spot

Mom and Dad had been here for a while and already had coffee and cake. Helen and I opted for khachapuri (cheesy Georgian bread) with wine.

Once we'd finished eating, we explored some other viewpoints.

We could just about make out the ferris wheel we'd ridden on yesterday; it looked tiny from this distance.

We got talking to a lady from America, who offered to take a picture for us. She'd been here on a guided tour.

Once we'd finished exploring, it was time to catch the cable car back down the hill.

It was a fun end to what has been a fun day in Batumi. I'm glad the day got drier as it went on  

When we got back to the hotel after dinner last night, the guy on reception alerted us to the fact that the hotel bar and roof terrace was open. We knew the hotel was supposed to have a bar, but booking.com had said it was closed for several months, so this was a surprise. We went up to explore and found that we had the most incredible views out across Batumi.

We climbed up a slightly shaky spiral staircase to the outdoor roof terrace and could see all the towers we'd walked past during the day illuminated at night.

In one direction we could see the mosque, which Helen and I had walked past earlier in the day...

...while in the other direction we could see the Alphabetic Tower and Ferris Wheel, both of which seemed to be lit up in a display of changing colours.

When we woke up this morning the weather was forecast to be bright, warm and sunny all day, which was a relief after yesterday morning's rather dramatic rain. It was a relief in particular because our plan for the day was to visit the Batumi Botanical Gardens, which are located on a hill a few kilometres to the north of the town. Helen booked us a Bolt to get there; the driver drove a bit more quickly than we might have liked, but we made it there in one piece.

On arrival our first mission was to try and get a proper cup of coffee. There is coffee in the hotel at breakfast, but only instant Jacobs out of a jar, which you have to make yourself with hot water. We'd noticed when in the bar last night that the hotel does actually appear to have a proper espresso machine, so we'd come to breakfast armed with cash in the hope that, if we paid, we'd be able to get something stronger than instant. Unfortunately, the waiter told us that the machine was broken, so we were stuck with a cup of instant after all.

There did turn out to be a cafe outside the entrance to the botanical gardens and we caught sight of a coffee machine inside it. This was manned by an old lady, who in return for 7 lari each (about £2), pressed buttons on the machine to dispense americanos and cappuccinos for us. It probably wasn't the best coffee we'd ever had, but at least it was something!

We bought tickets for the botanical gardens and went inside. The main path began to climb uphill almost immediately, but we were soon rewarded with fantastic views back towards Batumi and the snowy mountains behind it.

When reading reviews about the Batumi botanical gardens last night, the main theme coming across was that it has a lot of trees.

Some visitors seemed quite disappointed with this, having expected it to be the sort of botanical gardens that features flowers.

It's true that we didn't see many flowers over the course of the day, but the trees really were interesting and beautiful.

The gardens loosely seemed to be laid out by continent, although it wasn't always entirely clear which area we were in. Sometimes there were helpful signs, like this one which proclaimed that we were in front of a collection of maples.

And they were really pretty.

We must have been in a North American zone, because shortly after that we passed a Californian sequoia tree.

Most of the views had been inland up to this point, but after this we began to reach more viewpoints down to the Black Sea.

The sea looked really lovely today with a blue sky...

...so we took a family selfie

The wire which you can see going across the photos behind us was from a zip line.

This seemed to be surprisingly big business at the botanical gardens and for the price of 70 lari (about £20) a succession of people were shooting across it, some of them screaming quite loudly!

The path continued along by the sea for a while.

We could see back towards Batumi and the mountains again.

You'll struggle to make it out on this photo because it's just a speck in the sea, but we also stood for quite a while watching a dolphin, who kept surfacing out of the water surprisingly close to the coast.

We progressed from the lower part of the gardens to the upper part.

Some of the plants looked quite tropical at this point.

In particular, there was some absolutely gigantic bamboo. The photos do not do justice either to how tall it was or how wide the trunks were!

After that we did reach some of the rare flowers in the garden when we came across the rose garden.

The rose garden looked beautiful so we attempted to walk down to look at it, but got send back by a woman shouting at us in Russian. There was a man spraying the roses with chemicals, so probably for the best that we didn't get too close and breathe them in!

We did find some other pretty places. There was a pond with lots of goldfish...

...some bottlebrush trees like we'd seen in the street the other day, except these were pink...

...and lots of lovely palm trees.

I think we were technically in the New Zealand part of the gardens at this point, although as I said the descriptions seemed quite loose.

At some point we must have ended up back in Asia, because we passed some tea bushes.

There were also some Japanese gardens...

...and some nice formal gardens where we sat down for a short rest.

After that we passed the trunks of some enormous trees which had fallen over in the past.

This one was forming a tree-bridge, which some people were walking across. We weren't that brave, though!

By this point we'd reached the far end of the gardens and sat down at a cafe to have lunch. I had some more cheesy Georgian bread, which was nice. The experience was marred slightly by several stray dogs running around. There is a huge quantity of stray dogs in Georgia - more than I've seen anywhere else - and they mostly haven't been a problem. The vast majority of the dogs we've seen have a tag in their ear, which means they have been vaccinated against diseases like rabies. A couple of the dogs in the gardens didn't appear to have anything in their ear and I wasn't particularly happy when one of them came sniffing round our table.

After lunch we retraced our steps through the gardens.

We took a few different routes on the way back to our original starting point.

We came across this very scenic viewpoint...

...and the fumigating of the roses seemed to be over, so we were finally able to explore the rose garden

We passed more enormous trees...

...admired the Black Sea through binoculars...

...and finally began to have more downhill paths than uphill as we got closer to the exit.

As we made our way out we passed some gorgeous lilies, growing alongside a stream...

...and got a rare glimpse of a passenger train on the railway line which runs past the botanical gardens. We'd been hearing trains all day, but they had all been cargo trains.

By the time we got out of the gardens we thought it would be nice to sit down and have some coffee. We found a nice terrace to sit on...

...having been enticed into this cafe by a sign promising iced coffee.

Unfortunately, it turned out that not only did they not have iced coffee, they also couldn't do lattes, americanos or anything else mentioned on the sign; only Turkish coffee. We gave up and caught a Bolt back into the centre of Batumi to have coffee there. That turned out to be slightly more of an adventure than intended, when the taxi driver started driving off at the end of the trip before Mom had finished climbing out of the vehicle! But we all just about survived the experience and eventually managed to get some coffee back in the Batumi Piazza, where we'd had coffee the day we arrived

It was a fun day in a really beautiful spot, and a nice end to what has been a great holiday. Tomorrow we will be travelling back to Birmingham via Istanbul. Fingers crossed the flights go more smoothly than our KLM experience on the way here!!!