Georgia Day 1 - Tbilisi - თბილისი

Ready to fly

Saturday 13th August

We were up bright and early, at 05:30. We joined the queue for baggage at 06:30 and I immediately started speaking Georgian with some people with a small dog called Menes მენეს. About 30 minutes later who did I see but my boss, who is also Georgian. She was there with two friends, one who looked a little sickly. We dropped off our bags and the security and passport control was surprisingly short.

I picked up a large bottle of Grolsch beer and Connemara whiskey for Dato, my online Georgian teacher who was waiting to pick us up in Tbilisi. We decided to get breakfast in the Jamie Oliver place. It turned out that they gave me a meat breakfast instead of the veggie breakfast but they changed it for me, however it took them ages to sort out Stanislav's porridge and my breakfast was getting cold! We paid the price of 27 euro for this pleasure!

We waited to board the plane and got speaking to a lady called Nata ნატა and her daughter. We then skipped the queue Balkan style but the people didn't seem to mind as I was something of a celebrity speaking their language! The flight was delayed for a total of about an hour!.

I read my book "Stories of a Drowning Boy" by Dennis Nilsen the Scottish serial killer. All we got for our 5 hour flight was a glass of water.

Evening meal

Dato picked us up at the airport and dropped us off at the hotel. After about an hour we had a walk around and had some dinner. Stanislav had chicken salad and I had the most amazing mushroom soup, red wine and khinkali ხინხალი. Another short walk and I bought some beer and water and a plastic bottle of home made Saperavi wine. We found a terrace and ordered drinks and ended up speaking Croatian and Serbian to the people at the next table. I had started with a rather crap beer, but that was redeemed with a lovely wine, not Dutch size I can tell you! We returned to the hotel where I had a beer and tried the home made Saperavi.

Local wine

Dinner on day 1

In word #გემრიელი

#Georgia #Tbilisi #Georgianfood #საქართველო #კართულიენა #თბილისი #languagelearning