Kakheti – The Leftover Pictures – Part II, Outtakes Etc.

Crazy Holidays in Sighnaghi. I think this bus belonged to an American tour group I'd seen walking around town. I liked the travel agency's motto; reminded me of a travel agency I'd seen in Berlin once, called "Lucifer Reisen", with a motto added underneath: "Teuflisch Gut!"

Kakheti – The Leftover Pictures – Part I: The Oil Well

Arriving at the oil well.

Here are some more pictures I wanted to post, but didn’t get around to adding before.  This first part is from our stop at the oil well; as I may have mentioned, we didn’t spend that much time here, but we took a bunch of pictures, and I quite like the ones with the oil.  Part of the reason, I suppose, is that I had no idea oil was so reflective, and the imperfections of the oil’s surface distorted the reflections in an interesting way.  I could have stayed here for hours, but we had to get moving relatively quickly in order to get first to Sighnaghi, where Jeff and Nata would drop us off, and then let them get back to Tbilisi by around 10—I think Jeff had initially intended to go to the Italy-Georgia football match.

Ikalto, Alaverdi, & the Badagoni Vineyard

Ikalto Monastery.

Another short drive away is the monastery of Ikalto, one of two famous medieval Georgian academies, the other being Gelati outside Kutaisi.  The national poet Shota Rustaveli is thought to have studied here.  It was founded in the 6th century by Zenon, another one of the 13 Syrian fathers; in the 12th century King David the Builder invited the philosopher Arsen Ikaltoeli to establish an academy here, where the doctrines of Neo-Platonism were expounded.  In 1616 the complex was devastated by the Persians. (Most of this is taken from the LP guide).

Here too there was extensive renovation underway, particularly at the main church.  The floor inside the church had been largely excavated away, leaving a surface of uneven stone, plaster and wooden planks.

Dzveli & Akhali Shuamta

Dzveli Shuamta Monastery.

Our first stop after setting out from Telavi was Dzveli (old) Shuamta, an old monastery established in the 5th century.  The location is beautiful: up on a hillside surrounded by lovely forests carpeted with a thick green moss; it’d be a perfect place to set up camp and make mtsvadi and linger for an afternoon.  There are three churches in the clearing in the trees, though I couldn’t find any living quarters for the monks.  Perhaps they lived on the site of Akhali (new) Shuamta, where a convent was founded in the 16th century by the Kakhetian Queen Tinatin.  

Telavi

Erekle II Moedani, Telavi

We arrived in Telavi late in the afternoon on a warm, sunny day, the center of town packed with people.  The main street, Erekle II gamziri, was closed to traffic and lined with stalls representing various government departments interfacing with the people, and we later learned that President Saakashvili was in town, opening the new Gombori highway.  We stopped for a late lunch—we hadn’t eaten since breakfast—and then walked around checking out the guesthouses and looking around the city.  

Kvareli, Nekresi, & Gremi

The Ilya Chavchavadze House & Museum

After spending a few days in Sighnaghi, we headed out to Telavi, stopping along the way to see various places of interest.  This is in Kvareli, a small town whose principal claim to fame is the house of the “father of modern Georgia” Ilya Chavchavadze, writer, reformer and patriot.  From what little I know about him, gleaned mostly from the handful of texts accompanying the pictures and artifacts at the museum that had been translated into English, he seemed to be a sort of Georgian Tolstoy, minus the increasingly bizarre religious bent the latter suffered.

Bodbe Convent, Nino’s Spring, & Mtsvadi in the Forest

Buying pork in the bazari.

I think it was on our third day that we finally got out to Bodbe, a convent complex with the nearby St. Nino’s Spring.  We got some pork for our lunch, planning to check out the convent and then make lunch somewhere in the forest.

Khatuna had to negotiate for a while with the butcher, since he was trying to sell us mostly bone, fat, and gristle.  Eventually we got about a kilo of nice-looking mtsvadi pork.

Sighnaghi

At a cafe overlooking one of the squares.

I’ve rather lost track of exactly what we did when, so I’ve grouped the pictures by event, rather than chronologically.  Here are some pictures of Sighnaghi.

Finally Back in Tbilisi – An Update

Nata and Jeff during a brief stop to stretch our legs.

After a few weeks in Italy and Vienna I’m back in Tbilisi, and haven’t been posting, so I thought I’d post some pictures of the past few weeks.  I’ve mostly been trying to get up to speed with my self-imposed work schedule, so not much really new, though I did go to Kakheti for a nice week.  I’ll have to spread the pictures out over several posts, so here’s the first batch.

Khatuna and I decided to go to Kakheti instead of our original plan to go to Batumi, and since Jeff didn’t have anything to do that day, he drove us out to Sighnaghi with Nata, stopping at various places on the way.  Here we just stopped briefly to stretch out legs a bit and each some figs we’d brought from Tbilisi.

24 Hours in a Vake Mansion

I’m sitting on a lovely terrace overlooking the garden and, above the leaves of the pomegranate and fig trees below, the roof-tops and apartment blocks of Tbilisi.  The red fruit of the pomegranate tree, with their little scarlet skirts protruding from the bottom, dangle from the twigs like miniature Chinese lanterns, while butterflies flit about the bright-red, poppy-like flowers.  Further in the distance the sun is shining on the houses rising on the hills on the other side of the city, the sunlight winking in the distant windows.  At my feet two white scotch terriers are curled up, twitching their ears and occasionally stretching out, revealing their pink-brown bellies.