Saturday Saturday

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ok, sorry i havent written in a while, been busy with internship work. this weekend was a lot of fun. on saturday we went to the hold narihala fortress and the sulphur baths. first i will talk about the fortress.i have no idea how old it, but it is old and has been built, destroyed and rebuilt a million times and has passed through the hands of georgians, persians, and russians at some point in the last 10 centuries. it was quite a trek up to the fortress. tbilisi reminds me a lot of sf because of the hills. it doesnt help that it felt like a billion degrees outside and it was humid and i was carrying a back pack up the huge hill. but it was worth it for the view. the fortress is made of stone with a church within it. i dont know if they still have services in this church because i dont know who would go to it since it's out of the way and there are a billion other churches to go to. the church was really beautiful. Georgian Orthodox churches look exactly like Russian Orthodox churches except the icons and the writing is in georgian. some of the icons ave slavonic inscriptions that i can read. ok so at the top of the fortress you can see tbilisi. we saw the river, different churches, old tbilisi, and the rolling green hills. since we had climbed all teh way up we decided to keep going and see where the path would take us. it took us to this huge aluminum looking statue of a woman. it is called kartli deda or mother of georgia. in one hand she holds a sword and the other a cup of wine. she holds the wine to greet friends and the sword to greet enemies. i thought it was a cool statue.

after the hill, and fortress we walked back down to "old tbilisi", had lunch and made our way to the sulphur baths. these baths are underground and from the street you can only see domes with little holes at top for the steam to escape from the baths. we decided to get our own private bath room as well as "massages" for each of us. the second we opened the door the the bath we were overwhelmed with the smell of rotten eggs. sulphur smells like rotten eggs. it took us a little getting used to, but we finally did. we stepped in the hot bath, which is basically a small pool or gigantic hot tub. it took about 10 minutes to completely submerge myself but i got in and it felt really good. it was so hot and steamy and stinky. ok so then the "massage" started. massage isnt really a good way to describe it, its more like sand paper to your body. well first you strip down and this husky buff lady comes in and takes the sand paper'ish' washcloth and just starts scrubbing you. it kinda hurts but when u realize all this nasty dirt and grime is coming off your body, u suck it up and it's not so bad. then she washes you with a regular wash cloth and soap and kinda massages you. she's pounding your back but u are laying on a marble table so it kinda hurt too. and then when she is done she dumps several buckets of the hot sulfur water on you. needless to say it was an experience, but it was a really good one and can't wait to go back. Pushkin bathed here and according to my Lonely Planet guidebook he said it was the best bath he had ever taken. so it's kinda cool i was bathing with the likes of Pushkin as well as Alexander Dumas and the Tsar.

so at the baths they also have a cold showers too and u are supposed to go from hot to cold etc like a banya. so then after the massage we showered and got on our merry way home. well u know when u get used to a smell, you dont realize it smells. so we got on the minibus home in a smelled my arm quickly and i reeked of sulfur. we probably stunk up the whole bus on the ride home and didnt even notice hahah. o well maybe we didnt. no one said anything and if they did we didnt understand cuz we dont speak georgian. sorry this post wasn't that funny. maybe nextime 😉

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