Monday, October 3, 2011

Batumi (September 18 & 19)


The weekend started with meeting Emma in Tbilisi on Saturday as she was visiting Lauren for the weekend.  We walked around Tbilisi, got some lunch and attempted to WALK UP a million and a half stairs to get some observation deck? to be honest, I have no clue where we were climbing to but it seemed like a good idea at the time.  We then got a call from Kiki to hang out (a native Georgian friend), met her at Freedom Square and went to Turtle Lake (Kus Tba) in Tbilisi – it’s a small lake on “top” of Tbilisi.



As we are sitting enjoying a lovely glass of ghvino, Eva gets a phone call and gets invited to a TLG event in Batumi.  I sat there waiting for the phone call and thought to myself—why the hell am I waiting around?! I asked her for the number, called them and asked if I could come too.  I was called back in about 5 minutes saying that I was very welcome to join.   We were asked to meet in Tbilisi at 9am the next morning, so I went home to pack and bust a sleep.

The bus ride to Batumi was super long—it took almost 9 hours but it was rather enjoyable as Eva and I sat right up front on the double decker bus and we got a lovely view of the whole ride there.   We stopped in Kutiasi for some lunch.  Lunch was awesome! I felt like a king—there was pretty much every type of Georgian traditional food available and we got to mingle with other TLGers from different groups including the group that came after me.  I love meeting new people!

We got to Batumi at 5:30 and were told that our rooms were not ready as of yet so about 25 girls had to run and get ready in the lobby bathroom of the hotel as we were due to go to a Georgian musical that the president was attending.  Honestly, I really hate people sometimes.  There was this woman in our group that was flipping out that the room weren’t ready and how difficult could it be to get everyone checked in.  ugh. I honestly wanted to punch her right in the face.  Let me make something clear—this entire trip was FREE. The bus ride, the awesome lunch, the show, the hotel room. EVERYTHING WAS FREE. How dare you complain when you aren’t spending anything.  Honestly, people have some nerve!   I later went over to the person she had been yelling at and apologized for her embarrassing and offensive behaviour.

The art house was beautiful!  It had just opened a few months before and was made pretty much out of glass—thank god I was wearing a dress and giving all the people downstairs a free show! The beginning of the show was delayed a bit as the president and his buddy from Morocco had to show up and get a standing ovation.  The play was wonderfully done.  Great music, creative costumes and beautiful singing.






We went back to our hotel, got our rooms assigned and to my surprise, Eva and I landed a luxury suite.





We invited our friends over and spent the night talking, drinking some delicious wine and putting off sleep—since its for the weak!   As the sun was rising we decided to go and check out the Black Sea as we were all leaving at 10 in the morning to head back home.




The trip was super awesome and I can’t thank TLG enough for taking me along.

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