Sunday, 28 June, 2015
During the night we had lost power, yet another utility failure. Around 8:00 AM, the power is recovered. Amazingly (not), the Internet is now working – I had tried to get them to do a router restart yesterday but they would not listen.
So it is time to leave the mountain areas.
We do our last drive in the “3 miles of bad road” in Besu’s bus. The drive after that is uneventful other than we start seeing more Pigs on the road after having been mostly Cows. We stop at the same restaurant for lunch than we had been two days before. Because we had not ordered in advance, we just got a lot of stuff that we liked, including the beef ribs. Only at the end the interloper ordered two serves of corn bread, ate one piece and then left the rest behind.
We drive further West, all the way to the Black Sea. We drive though a number of beach towns that remind of the wonderful (NOT) places like Atlantic City, Seaside Oregon, Venice Beach – Los Angeles. When we get to Batumi, a largish seaside beach town, we discover that Andrew, upset at the standard of accommodation so far, has updated us to a really nice Hotel.
Although we get there later in the afternoon, there is still time for Hugh and I to get a massage. Julie organises me for 90 minutes. When I get to the massage place, Que? who are you, all the masseurs are busy? I mentioned that the booking had been organised by the front desk. After a few phone calls it is agreed that I could have a massage. It was quite good with major focus on my legs which were, to tell the truth, the most serious difficulty after that long climb in Vardzia. 90 minutes passes by quickly. I shower and go up to the room and meet Julie who has been prancing around town. We get a phone call from the Massage area to say that she had missed her massage appointment, still never realising that I was it until Julie went down and explained it directly. “Ah, your husband!”
We are to go out to a seafood restaurant on the Sea. It was not until we left that we realised Andrew was not coming, he does not like fish and seafood.
Besu drives us to the coast and after a few strange turns pulls into a carpark near the restaurant.
All in all, the fish was quite over cooked. For example, the salmon – a beautiful piece of fish, but totally dry and to Julie quite tough. Unnecessary.
We drive back to the beautiful hotel. Andrew is just finishing in its restaurant albeit as we arrive there is a bevy of screaming young kids around. Tomorrow is a another day.