Around Tbilisi, Georgia - part 1

This article perfectly describes the Tbilisi we experienced: "... it's a great pulsing tangle of colorful neighborhoods connected by wild and woolly streets that operate like an exercise in pure libertarian principles ... a place where not just east and west but past and present are rubbing up against one another."

Europe Square

Narikala Fortress

Freedom Square

Ethnographic museum in Tbilisi

Caught the city bus to Vake city park ($0.26 for a ride!!) and then hiked up the hill to get to the open-air museum.

Vake Park

Soviet monument to World War II victory

Open-air museum

Lunch at the restaurant at the museum

Tbilisi Botanical Gardens

A visit to the Botanical Gardens

Walk up Mount Mtatsminda, Tbilisi

The old town of Tbilisi sits at the bottom of a ridge topped with a fortress. We walked up to the fortress, then followed the ridge to the top of Mount Mtatsminda. Along the way we passed the “Mother of Georgia” statue and then Georgian billionaire, Bidzina Ivanishvili's glass and steel mansion.

At the top of Mount Mtatsminda is a large building housing a restaurant, a tall TV tower, and an amusement park. Almost everyone gets up to the top either by car or by funicular. We, however, do things the hard way!

Mother of Georgia, and the TV tower at the top of Mount Mtatsminda in the distance

Bidzina Ivanishvili's mansion (photo taken on another day)

Church on the way down

Around Frankfurt

We stayed in Frankfurt for two days before flying to the Republic of Georgia. The idea was to have some time to get over jetlag before flying another 2 time zones further east to the Republic of Georgia.

Don't misinterpret "time to get over jetlag" as us sitting around and relaxing. I would guess that we walked over 50 km while in Frankfurt.

Frankfurt skyline from the Main river

On the main square of the old town

Construction going on everywhere

Eurotower

View from our hotel room

Cathedral tower

Downtown pedestrian zone

The Eiserner Steg pedestrian bridge

Old and new

We walked to the nearby "village" of Höchst, actually now part of Frankfurt, and had lunch in a very picturesque square.

Our tickets to Tbilisi, Georgia have us leaving Frankfurt at 6:40 pm, flying to Riga, Latvia, one hour to transfer to the next flight, arriving in Tbilisi at 3:40 am ... yay...

Flight to Frankfurt, Germany

It's been a while since I've posted we'll see if I still remember how!

We stayed at a hotel in Coquitlam on Sunday night and then on Monday morning drove to a self-storage place in Richmond to drop off our car for three and a half months while we are gone. From there we walked across the bridge and to the Vancouver Airport.

For some unknown reason we weren't able to check in online or at the kiosks at the airport, so we waited over an hour just to get our boarding passes. Then another long wait to get through security. However, boarding was late so in the end all was well. Our flight left at 12:40 pm and arrived in Frankfurt at 7:20 am.

Since we couldn't check into our hotel until 2 pm, we decided to walk from the airport to downtown, and then walked around a good part of downtown. Once we were in our hotel room a nap was exactly what we needed.

Looking forward to a full day of exploring tomorrow.

Walking to the Vancouver Airport

Sunrise off the coast of Europe

Taxiing to our gate at Frankfurt Airport

Along the walk from the airport to town

Coffee break!

Our luxurious accommodations for the next two nights