Blogs from Tbilisi District, Georgia, Asia

Day 19 Tblisi, Georgia: 20C / 21C Art Day. Favourites: Niniko Morbedadze & Pirosmani. Walking the glass floor..... Georgian Museum of Fine Arts, Rustavelli Street. Philanthropists, George (Gia) Jokhtaberidze and Manana Shevardnadze started collecting art in 1990s. They seem to have been / are pretty loaded and have attempted to keep relatively inexpensive Georgian art from the Soviet era together in one collection rather than being shipped abroad. On a massive scale. The building itself, with a stair-and-escalator heart of glass started construction in 2013, building opened 2018. It’s an impressive building and it houses a huge collection over two large floors. Walking on glass floors is a curious sensation. So big is the collection, with each artist comprehensively represented, it becomes a bit overwhelming. There is a good balance of female and male a... read more

Day 17 Georgia, Tblisi. Wedding Anniversary in the Botanical Gardens and Beyond Old Tblisi Five Rooms, our hôtel, is in area on the east bank of Tblisi, just beside the presidential palace with its modern glass dome. Today we set off on foot to reserve our marshrutka back to Yerevan in five days time. There has been some renovation of the buildings here like the posher 3 star hotel 50m away, where we eat breakfast, there Quarter is yet to be extensively ‘done’. The very nature of elaborate balcony structures in wood is that they warp and rot when gutters fail and water gets to them. So there are many tumble-down examples. There are few tourists in the back streets as we negotiate our way to the bus base. Rather, the area is thronging with Tblisi ... read more

Day 16 Tblisi. Loud Men, Men Sitting Around, Women Grafting.... It’s all very lovely, Tiblisi. Even in the midst of the traffic with a helmet-less guy roaring by on a Harley Davison with decibels beyond the reach of normal human kind. As always, we walk plenty, taking in the changes for we were here in 2016. The sun is up, we’ve eaten Eggs Benedict on toasted brioche in the Blue Fox, and all is good. There’s a wedding on the main boulevard, Rushtavi Street. Kahveti St George Church. Car horns are blaring, with all the young women dressed up in satin almost matching the bride’s beauty and attention to detail. Meanwhile the young men hang about outside the church slugging from zimboom with their bellies out of ill fitting shirts and suits with skinny jackets. We ... read more

Day 15 Tblisi Georgia. We survive a five hour marshrutka minibus ride and visit old memories. The Cascade Hotel Yerevan is spot-on, we reserve a further two nights for our return from Georgia before our flight back to Paris. A woman driver booked by the hotel takes us to the marshrutka bus station sited below the Genocide Museum. We’re more than an hour early for our reservation but there is a seven seater ready to go with our final two places filling the bus. So the adventure to Tblisi begins. A middle aged Chinese HR manager shares our back seat. In front is a retired Canadian/Armenian couple, an Armenian old guy, and by the 35 year old driver and a 73 year old American from Seattle. Our pilot drives at 100km per hour whenever possible, even ... read more

Day 14 Armenia. Back in Yerevan: Goin’ Lada Loco.... Reflections Upon Armenian Machinas Big and Small. Saryan Armenian Master, and Carmen the Opera. As we travel south in the hire car we’re passing reinforced concrete carcasses of the industrial past. Irena, host at Iris BnB, related a story of lower wages and living conditions in post war Alaverdi after the closing of the copper mine and smelting plant. A classic conundrum: the closing of a terrible polluter of the rivers and air means as a result massive unemployment figures in that region which remain high, and many younger people moving away to the south and abroad. And It’s likely that each of these towns that we pass through, with their closed factories and foundries, has a similar level of poverty and a lack of prospects. Despite ... read more