One of the fountains in the formal gardens at Linderhof Palace
On my holiday in Bavaria, I continued to tour King Ludwig II’s fantastical castles and palaces and today I was going to Linderhof.
I went to Linderhof Palace after my morning paragliding flight and I was still flying high from this amazing experience. It was a beautiful, warm, sunny day, so I was expecting to enjoy Linderhof Palace and its grounds and I wasn’t disappointed.
Linderhof Palace and gardens
Linderhof was my favourite of King Ludwig II’s castles and palaces. It was really worth going inside Linderhof. In my opinion, the interior was much better than at Neuschwanstein, I thought Neuschwanstein was dark and gloomy inside, but Linderhof was bright and colourful.
Close up of Linderhof and Atlas holding up the globe on the palace roof
The bedroom was just spectacular. Mad King Ludwig II had the bedroom decked out like the Palace of Versailles. The king’s bedroom in Versailles was a showpiece because people would come and watch him get up in the morning and go to bed at night, but he didn’t actually sleep in the bed.
King Ludwig had it right, it was the exact opposite situation for him with his bedroom at Linderhof to the one of King Louis XIV at Versailles.
At the back of Linderhof Palace with the Bavarian Alps beyond
King Ludwig II was a recluse and he certainly had no one come into his bedroom and watch him get up in a morning and go to bed at night. He tended to sleep during the day and be up at night anyway. However, when he did go to sleep, he actually slept in his impressive, colossal, blue bed. I was pleased to know he had slept in the bed, it would have been such a waste otherwise.
Lion statue in the formal gardens
He was also so much of a recluse, he had a “Wishing Table” in his dining room which was lowered through the floor into the kitchen, his food was put on it and then it was lifted back up into the dining room so he didn’t have to see his servants. He seriously did not like anyone to interrupt the fantasy world he was living in. I can’t fault him there!
Over the top Neptune Fountain with water jets spraying out of the horse’s nose!
The final room in the palace was the Hall of Mirrors, again it was a relatively small room, but the walls were completely covered with mirrors and King Ludwig would tend to use the room at night when it would be lit with hundreds of candles, their flames all reflected off the countless mirrors. It must have been a spectacular sight.
View of Linderhof Palace from the Music Pavilion
All the rooms were different colours, mainly pastel shades or bright colours, nothing dark and gloomy in there. On the tour of Linderhof, you get to see all the rooms too with it being such a small palace, it’s much smaller than Neuschwanstein. It was the only one of his castles that was completed because King Ludwig designed a manageably sized palace, rather than an enormous castle.
The Music Pavilion
Another great thing about Linderhof was there weren’t many people on the tour so it was much easier to see everything and hear the guide. Linderhof isn’t as well known as Neuschwanstein, subsequently less people visit. One thing you certainly shouldn’t miss when you go to Linderhof are the grounds. I was lucky to be there on a fine day, so I could explore the grounds extensively.
Waiting for Fred Astaire in the Music Pavilion!
In front of the palace was a manicured formal garden and steps leading up to terraces with some amazing statues and fountains. I was particularly drawn to the horse fountain where water was spurting out of the horses’ nostrils! From the terraces you could appreciate the layout of the formal garden and see the palace. However, I preferred the grounds at the back of the palace with a plant covered tunnel to walk through and the Music Pavilion, a gazebo at the top of the hill with a view to Linderhof Palace and the Alps beyond.
Trellis archway in the palace grounds
The only thing I didn’t like about walking through the grounds was the number of slow worms on the path, I saw three, they all looked like baby snakes and all made me jump. It was a hot day, so they were out enjoying the sunshine the same as me, but I don’t like snakes, not even little ones. If I have to hurl myself off the top of a mountain, I’m practically fearless, a slow worm is on the footpath in front of me and I’m scared. What a wimp!
The Venus Grotto – an artificial cave in the grounds of Linderhof
There were a few buildings around the grounds at Linderhof, most impressive was the grotto.
The Venus Grotto is an artificial dripstone cave and I was surprised just how big it was. It features a lake and a stage and a shell shaped gilt boat on the lake. I had read that King Ludwig liked to ride in his boat on the lake in his man made cave which was designed to look like a stage set from the opera, Tannhäuser while he listened to music from Richard Wagner operas. When I visited the boat was on the lake and I could see the beautiful stage at the back of the cave. Sadly I wasn’t allowed to ride in the shell shaped boat to get a closer look at the stage myself.
Mad King Ludwig used to like to sit in his boat and float around in the cave which depicts a scene from the Wagner opera Tannhäuser
I walked right round the grounds and saw all the other buildings too, including the replica of Hunding’s Hut, a hunting lodge that was built in 1876, but burned down less than 10 years later. It was rebuilt and burned down a second time. The present Hunding’s Hut was reconstructed in 1990. It has a tree in the middle of it and represents a set from Valkyrie, part of Wagner’s Ring Cycle. In fact, using sets from Wagner operas to decorate the castle rooms and grounds was a recurring theme, not only at Linderhof, but in all of King Ludwig’s palaces as King Ludwig II was a huge fan of Richard Wagner and the Germanic legends his operas portrayed.
A sword is stuck in the tree in the middle of Hunding’s Hut which is from a scene in Wagner’s Ring Cycle
There were a couple of other small buildings in the grounds, the Moorish kiosk with its spectacular peacock throne and the Moroccan house with its beautiful chandelier. You could only go into the doorway of the buildings so it wasn’t easy to get photographs. Both of these buildings were built elsewhere, bought by King Ludwig and transported to Linderhof.
Peacock throne in the Moorish House
There were plenty of places to walk around the grounds, especially in the woods around by the hunting lodge and at the back of the palace up in the Music Pavilion.
I thoroughly enjoyed my time at Linderhof, both the palace and grounds. The palace was small and beautifully decorated and the grounds and the numerous buildings in them were impressive. I particularly enjoyed the hunting lodge even though it was a replica and I thought the cave was fantastic.
Interior of the Moroccan House
The view of the palace and Bavarian Alps from the gazebo was amazing and I adored King Ludwig’s bedroom modelled on Louis XIV’s bedroom at Versailles. And I loved the fact that he used it, rather than it simply being a showpiece.
Having said that, all of Linderhof was a showpiece. It was definitely the pick of King Ludwig II’s palaces.
Enjoying my walk around Linderhof Park gardens
I travelled in Bavaria during the second week of May in 2015.
As no photographs are allowed inside the palace at Linderhof, if you want to take a look at the interior, check out the official website with a virtual tour of the palace complete with photographs of each room.
General information, including admission prices, can be found on the official palace website.
Please note, according to the Linderhof Palace official website, the Venus Grotto is presently undergoing extensive restoration work which is not due to be completed until the end of 2022. During these restoration works the Venus Grotto will remain closed.
I bought a 14 day pass which was valid for a large number of castles and palaces throughout Bavaria and cost 24 Euros. This leaflet details all attractions covered by the 14 day pass.
You can only visit Linderhof as part of a guided tour.
In 2018 tickets for a guided tour of Linderhof cost 8.50 Euros per person and includes admission to the park buildings.
In Winter it is possible to visit Linderhof Palace only for 7.50 Euros per person.
In Summer you can visit the grounds and park buildings only for 5 Euros per person.
Combination tickets for entry to Neuschwanstein, Linderhof and Herrenchiemsee cost 26 Euros per person.
Linderhof Palace is located 100km from Munich which is an approximate one and a half hour drive from the city.
I stayed at Hotel Kriemhild close to the Hirschgarten in Munich
I flew to Munich direct from Birmingham Airport with Lufthansa
Standing on the bridge of Queen Marie of Prussia with fantastical Neuschwanstein Castle behind me
On my holiday in Bavaria, I was keen to tour all of King Ludwig II’s fantastical castles and palaces.
King Ludwig II was never meant to be king of Bavaria. His older brother, Otto was supposed to be king. Otto was declared insane. As King Ludwig II was known as Mad King Ludwig, it does make you wonder what his brother was like!
The best view of Neuschwanstein Castle from the bridge over the Pollat Gorge
The first day I went to Neuschwanstein. Neuschwanstein is in the Bavarian Alps and is the most famous of King Ludwig II’s castles. Most people have seen photographs of the castle perched on a cliff top with the mountains of the Bavarian Alps behind it. In my opinion, Neuschwanstein has the most picturesque setting of any castle in the world.
I had bought a 14 day pass which was valid for entry into most of the castles and palaces in the area and was much cheaper than buying individual tickets for each place.
This is the first view you get of the castle as you walk up the mountain
You have to walk up the hill to get to the castle and I had fun avoiding the horses as people who can’t manage the walk up the hill have the option of a horse drawn carriage ride. I’m horribly allergic to horses, so in some places, avoiding them can be a challenge. There is also a minibus, but it wasn’t running that day. I would have walked anyway; I enjoy walking and like to get the exercise.
A close up of one of the castle turrets
I had plenty of time before the guided tour, so I walked to the Marienbrücke, the bridge over the Pollat Gorge named after King Ludwig II’s mother, Queen Marie of Prussia, that everyone heads to for a fabulous view of the castle where everyone takes a photograph, including me! The walk was lovely. With more time I would have gone further up the mountain, but I didn’t want to attempt a steep trail and then have to rush coming down and possibly break my neck to get to the tour on time or alternatively miss the tour, especially as it was quite busy that day. So I went back to the bridge and enjoyed the view in the sunshine.
Alpine waterfall viewed from Marienbrücke
The guided tour around the castle was interesting, but because Neuschwanstein is very popular, they cram a lot of people onto the tour, so it’s crowded, which made it difficult to see the rooms very well and you inevitably have the people who bring along noisy children. Neuschwanstein seemed to be particularly bad for this; I was struggling to hear what the guide was saying because of both the large number of people in the group and various children making a racket in the background.
Another view of Neuschwanstein Castle on the hike to Marienbrücke
Neuschwanstein was never finished. King Ludwig II had ambitious plans, but even though he had a colossal royal fortune, he blew it all constructing his castles and palaces and amassed huge debts in the process. He didn’t complete one castle and then start another, he had them built simultaneously and only the smallest of his palaces, Linderhof, was completed.
Neuschwanstein was supposed to have had over 200 rooms, but in fact, less than 20 were finished because the money ran out.
Extensive view of wings of castle from the courtyard
I had watched a Dan Cruikshank documentary on BBC4 about the castles of King Ludwig II a couple of years before and remembered the throne room in Neuschwanstein from that. It’s an over the top room, with bright colours, a starry ceiling and a mosaic floor with pictorial representations of animals. The thing that is missing from the room is a throne. King Ludwig II died before the throne was made.
Despite the appearance of the castle exterior seen here with Hohenschwangau from Tegelberg cable car, Neuschwanstein was never finished
When I say he died, his death is shrouded in mystery, no one knows for sure what happened to him, whether he was murdered or committed suicide. It’s a mystery that has kept people wondering for decades. It’s something that probably no one will ever have the answer to. However, the mystery surrounding King Ludwig II and his suspicious death just add to the enduring fascination with this eccentric king who lived in a permanent dream world. King Ludwig himself proclaimed: “I want to remain an eternal mystery to myself and others”.
Exterior of nearby Hohenschwangau Castle, childhood home of King Ludwig II bears a striking resemblence to Neuschwanstein Castle
Many of the rooms in Neuschwanstein are decorated as an homage to the heroes portrayed in the operas of Richard Wagner, many of which feature heavily in the castle’s interior. King Ludwig II was a huge fan of Wagner operas, he particularly identified with Lohengrin, the Swan Knight.
In Neuschwanstein scenes from Lohengrin are found in the salon, scenes from Tannhäuser are depicted in the study and the bedroom features murals depicting scenes from Tristan and Isolde.
Entrance gate to Hohenschwangau
The Singers’ Hall, along with the Throne Room was one the most important rooms in the castle and one of King Ludwig’s favourite projects at Neuschwanstein. This is the largest room in the castle and is a monument to the Germanic knights and legends of Tannhäuser, Lohengrin and Parzival, but it was never used for entertaining. King Ludwig II was a loner who didn’t like company, he preferred to enjoy his castle in solitude.
I loved Neuschwanstein, but I did find the interior a little dark and gloomy. I don’t think you should miss seeing inside Neuschwanstein, but it’s true what people say, it does look better from the outside than the inside. For me, this was the least impressive interior of the palaces I visited.
Hohenschwangau Castle looks like a miniature version of King Ludwig II’s first castle, Neuschwanstein
When I’d walked to the Marienbrücke before the tour I noticed a path back down to the town through the forest on my way there. I decided that was the way I was going back to town. So after my guided tour of the castle I walked 10 minutes uphill to go back downhill so I could take the forest path instead of the roadway. Forest walks are one of my holiday pleasures.
Sitting on a perimeter wall at Hohenschwangau Castle
Very close to Neuschwanstein is the smaller castle of Hohenschwangau. I also did a guided tour around this castle, which was less interesting and much smaller, but still worth the visit. Since I was there I was going to complete the castles associated with King Ludwig II and this was the castle where he grew up. The castle was built by King Ludwig II’s father, Maximilian II, who certainly didn’t have the architectural flair of his son. It was nowhere near as impressive as any of King Ludwig II’s castles. But Maximilian probably didn’t spend the colossal amounts of money building his castle as King Ludwig did.
Hohenschwangau Castle is also in a beautiful setting in the Bavarian Alps
One place that I did make a point of going into when I was at Hohenschwangau, was the chapel by the castle. It was very plain inside, but all you needed to do was look out of the window and you could see the Bavarian Alps. Like the chapel on Lake Tekapo in New Zealand, no stained glass window required, the view is all that is needed.
By the time I’d been in both castles, it was too late to venture to another of King Ludwig’s palaces, so I went a few miles down the road and went on the cable car up the Tegelberg for more views of the Bavarian Alps.
The highest mountain in Germany, the Zugspitze is visible from the top of Tegelberg on a clear day
As you’re going up in the cable car you can see Neuschwanstein and on a reasonably clear day like this, from the top you can see the Zugspitze in the distance, which is the highest mountain in Germany.
A paraglider successfully takes off from Tegelberg in challenging conditions
I saw some paragliders at the top of Tegelberg so watched them with interest as they took off, as it was my paragliding flight the next day, although I was going from a different location. I hoped my paraglide pilot was a bit more handy than the ones I saw taking off Tegelberg, it took some of them 3 attempts to get in the air! I did subsequently discover it is a difficult location to take off from.
Hiking on the trails at the top of Tegelberg
It was the end of the day and I’d seen the most iconic of Mad King Ludwig II’s fantastical castles, his childhood home and the highest mountain in Germany. It had been a good day.
Perched on a cliff top in the Bavarian Alps, Neuschwanstein has the most picturesque setting of any castle in the world
I travelled in Bavaria during the second week of May in 2015.
You cannot take photographs inside Neuschwanstein, the best way to see the interior is to take a virtual tour on the official website which features photographs of each room on the tour.
General information, including admission prices, can be found on the official castle website.
I bought a 14 day pass which was valid for a large number of castles and palaces throughout Bavaria and cost 24 Euros. This leaflet details all attractions covered by the 14 day pass. Hohenschwangau is the only palace I visited that is not covered in this pass.
You can only visit Neuschwanstein as part of a guided tour. In 2018 tickets for a guided tour of Neuschwanstein cost 13 Euros per person.
Combination tickets for entry to Neuschwanstein, Linderhof and Herrenchiemsee cost 26 Euros per person.
A combination ticket for Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau costs 25 Euros per person.
Neuschwanstein Castle is located 120km from Munich which is an approximate 2 hour drive from the city.
Hohenschwangau Castle is located a short walk from Neuschwanstein Castle. It is possible to visit both castles in the same day. Entry with a guided tour costs 13 Euros per person. Further details can be found on Hohenschwangau website.
Tegelberg Cable Car is a 5 minute drive from the parking area for Neuschwanstein Castle. A round trip ticket costs 20.60 Euros.
I stayed at Hotel Kriemhild close to the Hirschgarten in Munich
I flew to Munich direct from Birmingham Airport with Lufthansa
One of the wonderful things about Slovenia is its natural scenic beauty. I’d come here to experience the great outdoors. This is the story of the days I spent crossing the Julian Alps, hiking along the Soča Trail and spending time in the only National Park in Slovenia, Triglav National Park.
I was ready to start my day by driving the 49 hairpin bends of the Vršič Pass which was built by Russian prisoners of war during the First World War. Around 300 of them were killed in avalanches during the construction, so they built a Russian chapel along the road to commemorate them. The Vršič Pass winds for a little under 30 miles through Triglav National Park, so this makes it an incredibly scenic drive.
Russian Chapel commemorates the Russian prisoners who died during the construction of the Vršič Pass
Helpfully the road has a number on each hairpin so you don’t have to count how many you’ve driven round as you’re going, you can simply think “I’ve only driven around 7 so far?” It was 24 bends up to the top of the pass which is at an elevation of 1611m at its highest point, and then 25 bends down through the Julian Alps. The scenery is beautiful and it was a great day for driving with lovely weather conditions. I got out of the car a few times to take photos of the mountains, but I didn’t do any hiking until I got to the bottom of the pass. I’d planned to walk the Soča Trail which follows the River Soča for 20km or 25km, depending what you read. I was definitely not going to hike all of the Soča Trail, it isn’t even circular, so I’d just have to do a section.
On the final of the 49 bends was a monument to Julius Kugy, a Slovenian mountaineer who climbed peaks in the Julian Alps in the 19th century.
The highest point of the Vršič Pass is also halfway through the hairpin bends
I had read that you could hike to the source of the River Soča, a spring which emerges from a cave, so I drove to the mountain hut which is the starting point of the trail. It said on the signpost it would take about 15 minutes. What the signpost didn’t tell you was what the hiking trail was like.
It was uphill, which I expected. Then I got to the point where there was a steel cable drilled into the rock. As a handrail to help you along the steep climb, I thought. Initially it started that way. Then the cliff ledge got narrower, actually calling it a ledge is being generous, and you’re edging your way along halfway up a cliff holding onto this steel cable. It was terrifying! At one point there was a couple coming towards me and there was nowhere to pass, so I had to go back and find a spot where there was a section of rock wide enough for me to sit down on, I didn’t even trust my balance to stand.
Popular viewpoint to admire the Julian Alps along the Vršič Pass
Anyway, after climbing down a couple of iron rungs, I was finally close to the cave. This German family was there with 2 teenage lads who were messing about for ages throwing a bottle attached to a piece of string into the cave, unsuccessfully trying to fill it with the spring water below, totally blocking my view for a photo. Eventually they moved out of the way, I got a photo of the source of the river in the cave and noticed that my shadow was reflected in the photo too. The German family were settled having lunch, it was time for me to head back to my car.
Monument to Julius Kugy, Slovenian mountaineer, at bend 49 marks the end of the Vršič Pass
I climbed the iron rungs and got to the steel cable on the side of the cliff. The first section is narrowest, there’s no room at all really, I was hanging onto this cable and I tried to move along. And I realised I was stuck. You know these people who climb the cliff on the beach because the tide is coming in and then they realise they can’t move? That was me! I moved one leg, no that wasn’t going to work, I had a second attempt. Oh my God. What was I going to do? I was just hanging there. The German family watching me must have been extremely amused and thinking what a pathetic wimp I was. I’m not sure how I did it, but I worked out how I was going to move without falling and smashing my head open on the rocks below and after that, it was a bit easier. Thankfully I didn’t meet anyone coming the other way, because there was no way I was going back and doing that again!
The Soča Trail – a woodland hike following the course of the River Soča
The literature I got on the Soča Trail said the path to the source of the river was a safe and well maintained trail. I’m sure if you’re Bear Grylls or a free climber in Utah, the safe and well maintained trail that had you clinging to a steel cable on the edge of a cliff face would have posed no problem. As I don’t fall into either of those categories, I found it a bit more difficult. Always looking for new adventures and challenges and I certainly found one! Legend has it that a dragon guards the source of the River Soča, however, in my case, it was completely unnecessary, that sheer cliff face was enough protection, no dragon required!
A peaceful spot along the River Soča
I didn’t take any photos of the path to the source of the Soča River, since I was too busy clinging onto the steel cable drilled into the rock and trying not to fall off the cliff. There are plenty of images available on Google of the source of the Soča if you care to look at them, which show you the path and you can decide for yourself from those images whether I’m a pathetic wimp or not!
Not content with that I decided I should hike more of the Soča Trail. Talk about when will I ever learn!
Boka Falls – the highest waterfall in Slovenia
I called in at a Tourist Information Centre for the National Park and asked the bloke there to recommend a section for me to walk. He recommended a section through the gorge which would take about an hour one way. I stopped at a parking spot where there was an information board about cheese making and there was a sign for a farmhouse that let you sample homemade cheese. I walked to the farmhouse and there was a sign saying they had no more cheese left for the year! So with no cheese to fuel me, I followed the trail along the River Soča.
The hike to view the Boka Falls was a good deal easier than to the source of the Soča
I wasn’t sure how far I’d go along this path, I decided the minute I saw a steel cable embedded into the rock was when I would turn round! I saw the gorge which was very beautiful and it was a very quiet path too, I didn’t meet many other hikers on this stretch. I’m not sure whether there was more of the gorge, but you know when you get to a point where you’ve had enough and even if the best bit is just around the corner you don’t care any more? Actually if I’d known for certain the best bit was just around the corner I would have carried on, but I had no idea, the map was very vague. I’d done over 4km and the further I walked, the further away my car got. I’d be driving this way anyway, so if there was an amazing viewpoint I’d missed, I could stop at the side of the road.
Swingbridge across the River Soča on the Kobarid Historical Trail
Judging from the drive, I think I did miss some of the gorge, I got out of the car and took a few photos, but I’d seriously had enough by now. I’d planned to hike the Kobarid Historical Trail and there was no chance I’d get to do that today now.
There was one more stop I wanted to try and do before the end of the day, the Boka Waterfall, at 144m it’s the highest in Slovenia. It was only 15 minutes to walk there from the parking by the side of the road. Mind you, that’s what they said about the source of the Soča!
A long way down to the River Soča from Tonovcov Castle
I parked up and decided I really did have to see this while I was passing. It actually only took me about 10 minutes to walk there. You only get to see it from a distance and they’d had a really dry summer so there wasn’t a massive amount of water, but it was definitely worth the walk. So now I’d seen the highest waterfall in Slovenia.
And then it was on to Kobarid which was my overnight stop. I had no time to do anything in Kobarid that night, other than go and get a pizza. I asked them if they did take out and had a glass of wine while I waited. The wine is very cheap in Slovenia, only just over a Euro for a glass, even in restaurants, and it’s generally nice stuff too.
View of the River Soča and Slovenian Alps along the Kobarid Trail
The next day I was heading for Vipava, one of the wine centres of Slovenia and planned to take it easy, not walk so far, as after the past 3 days I felt like my legs were about to drop off. I thought, I’d do the Kobarid Historical Trail in about an hour, then the Tolmin Gorge in about an hour and then spend a lazy afternoon in Vipava and taste loads of wine. You know the saying about the best laid plans?
I went into Tourist Information to get a map of the Kobarid Historical Trail. I was told it was 6km. That must have been the short version the lady in Tourist Information was telling me about. By the end of it I’d hiked twice as far, 12km! Not a bad morning stroll is it, 12km up and down steps, through forest paths that climbed up to the highest area of Kobarid where the castle had been built and then went steeply down to the river? I knew climbing that high would mean a massive descent because I had to cross the River Soča and I could see it way below me.
Kozjak Falls on the Kobarid Trail famously tumble into a cave
I followed the signs to see Tonovcov “Grad”, which is one of the few Slovenian words I’d learnt. Grad means castle. And waterfall is “slap”. I was on my way to see Slap Kozjak, that was the main object of me walking the Kobarid Historical Trail. Anyway Tonovcov Grad wasn’t very exciting, it was a 5th century dwelling, there were information boards showing you what it would have looked like, a few bits of wall like you’d see at a ruined castle in England and then this house that was one of the main dwellings, except you couldn’t get inside it because the doors were all locked! This was about the highest point of the walk, the river looked gorgeous, it really is the most beautiful colour. It was also a really long way down.
High above the River Soča, the Napoleon Bridge signals the end of the Kobarid Historical circuit
When I got to the river I got to cross on a swing footbridge. They’re a prominent feature of the Soča Trail and I had almost rejoined it by now. I love swing footbridges, so it was lovely crossing that and then there was a path that took me to the Kozjak Waterfall. It’s nothing like as high as Boka, in fact, it’s only 15m high, but it’s the most famous one because it falls into a cave. I was horrified to spot steel cables again, but it wasn’t like the source of the Soča, it was a nice wide wooden boardwalk. What a luxury! There was a stream to cross with stepping stones. I’m not incredibly keen on them, I tend to slip and end up with soaking wet socks, but I managed to get across without stepping into the water. Then I noticed the bridge… Oh well, I’d use it coming back.
Tolmin Gorge is in the southern part of Triglav National Park, the only National Park in Slovenia
The waterfall is impressive, well worth the hike and it certainly is a beautiful setting, although I’m not convinced the long historical trail I did to see it was entirely necessary. But the route I walked meant I did get to see the church of St Anthony with its surrounding octagonal walls at the top of a series of octagonal steps.
Kobarid is famous for the Battle of Kobarid (or Caporetto in Italian) during the First World War which was a battle on the Austro-Italian front and resulted in a huge defeat for the Italian forces with an estimated 10,000 Italian soldiers killed. Ernest Hemingway wrote about the battle in his novel “A Farewell to Arms”. The church of St Anthony was built in memory of the Italian soldiers who died in this First World War battle and are buried there. The ones who were identified have their names inscribed on the walls of a specially constructed memorial below the church. It was very moving. After that I was back into Kobarid. 3 hours later!
The rocks are almost touching in this narrow part of Tolmin Gorge
Now I had a decision to make. Did I go the Tolmin Gorge and hike for another hour in Triglav National Park or did I go straight to Vipava and have a relaxing afternoon of wine tasting? Why walk 12km when you can walk 18km? I headed to the Tolmin Gorge.
Triglav National Park is Slovenia’s only national park. And it was worth going to the Tolmin Gorge, it was beautiful scenery. I did all the side hikes including to see the natural bridge that supposedly looked like a bear’s head. I couldn’t see it myself. But it was a nice walk. However, since I did all the side trails, it took me well over an hour to complete. So now it was going to be 4pm before I got to Vipava. So much for my relaxing afternoon of wine tasting. And I was now at the stage where I thought my legs were going to drop off. I was obviously really unfit.
Does the rock wedged between the two sides of the gorge look like a bear’s head?
Vipava is a beautiful place and I’d strategically placed myself in accommodation right next to the Tourist Information Centre where they offered free wine tastings. My room for the night was up 3 flights of stairs, so I left my suitcase in the car and just pulled out the few things I’d need for the night, no way I was carrying my big, heavy suitcase all the way up there. I tried a couple of local drinks that were offered to me on arrival, a honey liqueur which was sweet and very nice and a flowery one, no idea what it was, but I liked that too.
Swing bridges also feature in Tolmin Gorge
Then it was next door to Tourist Information for the wine tasting. They only sold local wines there, from a 20km radius, but there were a huge number to choose from. There were 12 available to taste. I tried them all! Zelen and Pineta are two local white grape varieties that are geographically protected and wine from them can only be produced in that part of Slovenia. As Slovenia exports very little wine and I’d never been before, I hadn’t tasted either. They were both good. And I do know a good wine when I taste one. The last white I tasted I said was extremely good and the best of all the whites. And apparently this winemaker consistently is in the top 10 in Slovenia and lectures at the university on wine making! I didn’t taste a better wine amongst the reds and the semi-sweet Muscat I sampled, so I bought a bottle of the Zelen produced by the top 10 winemaker.
An amazing view of Vipava for me to enjoy from the balcony of my guesthouse room
And that concluded my time journeying through the Julian Alps, along the Soča River and my venture into Slovenia’s only National Park. I was going back to my accommodation to sit on my balcony and take in my view of the surrounding mountains. After all my walking today, I deserved a rest!
I travelled to Slovenia during the last week of September 2016.
The Vršič Pass is a mountain pass over the Julian Alps with 49 hairpin bends along its 28 mile length winding through the Triglav National Park. I travelled in the direction of Kranjska Gora to Bovec. Kranjska Gora is approximately a 30 minute drive from Lake Bled and an hour’s drive from the country’s capital, Ljubljana
The trail to the source of the River Soča can be accessed from the mountain hut beside the road to the hamlet Zadnja Trenta. To reach this mountain hut, turn right off the Vršič Pass after the monument to Julius Kugy after the last hairpin bend and follow the road until you reach the mountain hut. Free parking is available on the road. For images of the hiking trail click here
The Soča Trail runs approximately 25km along the course of the River Soča. Information is available from tourist information centres along the route.
The Trenta and Soča Valley websites have lots of useful information about the Soča Trail.
Boka Falls trail can be accessed from the road 4 miles from Bovec. There is an area for car parking, cross the road and the bridge to access the trail. It takes approximately 15 minutes to walk to the viewpoint.
Kobarid Historical Trail is 5km long and is a circular route from the town of Kobarid taking in the Kozjak Falls. It will take extra time to detour to Tonovcov Castle and the Church of St Anthony.
Tolmin Gorges trail is a 4km circuit accessed through the Tolmin Gorges located 2km from Tolmin. There is parking close to the trail entrance. There is an entrance fee of 5 Euros as the gorges are within Triglav National Park.
The Soča Trail, Tolmin Gorge and Vršič Pass are all within the boundaries of Triglav National Park
In Vipava I stayed at Guesthouse Koren next to the Tourist Information Centre on the main square. Parking is available, but the street to the back of the guesthouse is very narrow.
On my first trip through the former Yugoslavian countries I spent a weekend in Zagreb which I really enjoyed. I thought Zagreb was a nice city and there was a lot more going on there than in Ljubljana. It didn’t have a castle, however it did have a disproportionate number of museums for a city of that size. I managed three of them including what is possibly the saddest museum in the world, the Museum of Broken Relationships.
Beautiful glass ceiling in the Palace Hotel
I got the bus from Ljubljana to Zagreb, I’d booked online and taken note of the reviews and I made a good choice, it was a nice comfortable double decker with tables in it. I didn’t bother trying to go upstairs, there were spare seats downstairs with a table and a man already in the bus (it had come from Munich) helpfully pointed out that the two forward facing seats at the first table were unoccupied. It wasn’t far to Zagreb so I wasn’t sure why it was going to take so long to get there, but Croatia aren’t in the Schengen Agreement so we had to stop at the border and all get off the bus for a passport check leaving Slovenia and entering Croatia. It seemed a bit mad to me that I’d been crossing all these borders in Europe without any passport checks and yet when I transferred from one former Yugoslavian country to another I had to have a passport check.
The Palace Hotel was once the haunt of Hollywood stars
I stayed at the Palace Hotel in Zagreb, once the hotel of choice in Zagreb for the Hollywood stars, it’s got a lovely old fashioned lobby and very modern lifts that I couldn’t work very well. Instead of buttons the lift had one of these touch panels, like on a mobile phone or iPad, except I kept pressing and nothing was happening! Sometimes it worked first time, other times I was pressing and it just wasn’t lighting up. No one else seemed to have a problem, I must have had too delicate a touch!
The Cheese Bar only serves Croatian produce
I wasn’t bothered about doing too much for the rest of the day, it was almost 4pm by now. I knew several museums were open late, but I had a bit of a wander round and found a place called “The Cheese Bar” off the main square. It only served Croatian cheeses and wines (and some Croatian meats which, as a lifelong vegetarian, I don’t touch). So I ordered the cheese plate and looked for the grape varieties I hadn’t tried before. I thought I’d have a go at the whites that night. There were 4 grape varieties I hadn’t tried before, so I tried them all. They were reasonably priced and all but one were pretty good. I wouldn’t bother with Skrlet again. There were 3 young lasses sitting at the table next to me. This older bloke came in on his own, sat at another table next to them and then imposed himself on them. I could hear him attempting to chat them up. At least he didn’t ask to sit with me!
Delicious Croatian cheese is best enjoyed with Croatian wine
By the time I’d finished my cheese and wine I just wandered up to the corner of the square where they’d set up a stage for Vintage Zagreb. I’d been able to hear some of the music while I’d been in the cheese and wine place, I was sitting in a kind of outdoor conservatory. But I could hear much better from outside and I wouldn’t have expected to hear a singer and a jazz band playing “Won’t You Come Home Bill Bailey” in Croatia’s capital. It was a bit of a strange mix though because all the old cars they had in the square were American ones from the 1950s.
An original snowmobile in the Technical Museum, the most visited museum in Zagreb
Next day it was pouring with rain all day, so a good day for museums. I started out with the Technical Museum, not normally the type of museum I’d go to and the reason I went was entirely the fault of a Sacramento heavy metal band, Tesla. They named themselves after the inventor Nikola Tesla who was born in Croatia and on all of their albums they gave information about Tesla. So I was playing Tesla music and went to the Technical Museum. It’s the most visited museum in Zagreb because of all the school groups that go there. It also had a large number of parents taking their children there this Sunday morning. I can’t say it really grabbed me. The most interesting part for me was the bit about the environment, sustainable energy and old household appliances. They seemed to have a lot of sewing machines for some reason. There were some cars and planes and the original snowmobile.
The ultimate revenge!
There was also a tour down a mine that they’d built in the museum. The only problem was, the tour was only in Croatian. In fact, a lot of the information was only in Croatian. If they’d done the tour in German or French I could have followed it reasonably well, I could have got the general idea in Italian or Spanish, but Croatian, no chance. The only word I could make out was “bauxite”! But walking through the mine was okay.
It was the same story with the Tesla experiments, the man doing the experiments only explained what he was doing in Croatian. So when something happened I could see it, but I can’t say I fully understood what was going on which was a shame.
A tragic tale of love, heartbreak and suicide
Much easier to understand was the tragic Museum of Broken Relationships. Everything was in English, a lot of people from Sleaford had contributed, as for some reason, when the museum toured in 2012, it went to London and Sleaford in England. Is Sleaford a particularly bad place to live if you want a lasting relationship?
The ex axe was used to chop up the ex’s furniture…
There were some tragic stories in there, but some amusing ones too, the woman from Colorado who took the toaster when she moved out “that’ll show you, how are you going to toast anything now?” and the lad from London trying to persuade an Australian girl to stay in England by writing a list and first thing on his list was “Alton Towers is quite good”. How could anyone possibly consider going back to Australia after that? And then there was the ex axe where a man from Berlin went away on business for 3 weeks to the States and his girlfriend was heartbroken. When he got back to Berlin she told him she’d fallen in love with someone else and was moving out and would come back for her furniture in a fortnight. He bought an axe and by the time she came to pick up her furniture it was firewood! But there were the tragic stories too. Very good museum. There are a few more of these elsewhere in the world now, but Zagreb had the original concept, this was the first of these museums.
Rather more lighthearted – a persuasive list to keep an Australian girl in Britain
Finally I went to the Museum of Illusions, expensive for what it is, a few holograms and trick rooms with sloping floors or lots of mirrors. I did get a photo of infinite Hayleys which is much scarier than the ghost walk I went on that evening. The ghost walk was a bit lame, the stories weren’t very scary. I’ve been on ghost walks in England, mainly in York and ghost walks are something that we English do very well. So this didn’t really compare. But I got a 2 hour walk around parts of the city I hadn’t seen in the dark, so it wasn’t all bad.
Infinite Hayleys in the Museum of Illusions – a terrifying prospect!
I went back to The Cheese Bar and had my 3 favourite cheeses and tried 3 red Croatian wines, again grape varieties I hadn’t come across before. There were several brands of the most expensive red grape variety I hadn’t tried before and I asked the waitress if there was one she particularly recommended. She told me which one she thought was the best and it wasn’t the most expensive one. I was really impressed, it proved to me that the staff really were committed to giving the customer the best experience and not purely motivated by profit. They brought me a piece of chocolate tart when I’d finished my cheese, said it was on the house, they must have appreciated my interest in Croatian wine and my patronage two evenings in a row.
So all in all, I really enjoyed Zagreb and I would go back there, although I don’t know if I’ll be passing that way again. I will return to Croatia, but as Zagreb is inland and most people head to the coast, the capital isn’t a convenient stopping off point if you’re touring the Dalmatian coast. But if I do manage to get back to Zagreb, there are plenty more museums to go at. And plenty more wines!
I travelled to Zagreb on the first weekend in October 2016.
I stayed at the Palace Hotel in Zagreb, one of the original grand hotels in the city and former favourite of Hollywood stars. It is located in the city centre close to the railway station.
I visited the original Museum of Broken Relationships – the best museum in Zagreb and possibly the saddest museum in the world. Entrance costs 40kn.
I visited the Technical Museum which is the most visited museum in Zagreb. Entrance costs 20kn. There is limited information in English. The museum is located slightly out of the main centre of Zagreb, an approximate 15 minute walk.
I enjoyed Croatian cheese and wine at The Cheese Bar located just off the main square on Ulica Cesariceva Slapa. All produce is Croatian.
I travelled to Zagreb by bus from Ljubljana with Arriva who are part of the Panturist company. They offer cross border bus transport on comfortable, clean coaches from Munich to Zagreb via Ljubljana. Journey time from Ljubljana is 2 hours 15 minutes which includes the cross border passport check.
At Lake Bled, Slovenia’s most famous tourist destination
For me, the countries that made up the former Yugoslavia suffered from a huge image problem for a long time. Growing up in the 70s and 80s when Eastern Europe was communist, gave many people a tainted view. Communist countries were associated with oppression, thought of as grim, grey, dangerous places run by dictators. They were countries shrouded in secrecy thanks to the Cold War, no one really knew what they were like or what was going on there.
In Britain in the 1980s, there was a tour operator called Yugotours, who ran package holidays to Yugoslavia, which seemed to be the only communist country that could be visited with relative ease at that time. Even so, from what I can recall as a young teenager, Yugotours holidays had a reputation for being cheap, using substandard hotels and the packages being pretty low quality. So Yugoslavia didn’t exactly come with a glowing recommendation.
This was further compounded when the wars broke out in Yugoslavia in the 1990s and the news was full of images of a country being destroyed by bombs.
The Škocjan Caves are part of Slovenia’s world renowned spectacular karst cave system
So all of those elements completely overshadowed everything else and it never even occurred to me that these areas could have any sights worth seeing, a former communist, war torn country with low standard accommodation, infrastructure and services.
However, as I got older, communism had collapsed in Eastern Europe, the various countries of the former Yugoslavia recovered from the war of the 1990s, the Dalmation coast in Croatia began to gain popularity and got rave reviews for its beauty and I watched a travel documentary about Slovenia which gave me a bit of insight into this small country bordering Austria.
I began to think that there might be some sights worthy of attention in the countries that made up the former Yugoslavia, and in 2016, finally I got an opportunity to visit.
Driving over the Vršič Pass, this mountain scenery was not what I would have expected to see in the former Yugoslavia
I had done a lot of travelling in the former Eastern Bloc countries over the past 15 years, including the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary and even Russia and I generally loved them. They were countries full of fascinating historical sites, beautiful cities and spectacular natural attractions. So there was no reason why the countries that made up the former Yugoslavia would be any different.
I was travelling to Slovenia, my first former Yugoslavian country, from Prague and it was going to take me all day to get to Ljubljana by train. I first took a train to Vienna which was fine. I had two more trains to go and then I’d be in Ljubljana.
Vienna Main Station was easy to navigate and I’d paid €5 to upgrade to first class which gave me access to the airport style lounge with free drinks and snacks, a much more pleasant way to spend an hour and a half than waiting on the platform.
Sports promotion in one of Ljubljana’s city squares and the Alps in the distance
It’s a nice journey through the mountains to Villach, although I could only enjoy this to a certain degree since I was watching the timings for getting into the stations. At one point we were 3 minutes behind. This generally would be no big deal. Except when you only have 7 minutes to change trains and I had to get from one platform to another with my heavy suitcases either carrying them up and down stairs or in the lift if there was one. I did make my connection.
The final train was going to Zagreb and stopping off in Ljubljana. When we got over the border into Slovenia, the train ground to a halt. Then a man came round to our compartment and kindly informed us that the train was “finished”. So we all had to get off this train and I had to lug my suitcases to another platform and onto this wreck of a train covered in graffiti. When I found first class, it looked no better than second class, just as well I got my money’s worth in the lounge at Vienna Station! This was not a great first impression of the former Yugoslavia for me. Had my past assumptions about good reasons not to visit the country when it was still Yugoslavia been correct and were they still true today? Was all of Slovenia going to be like this? Broken down and covered in graffiti? I hoped not. We were half an hour late getting into Ljubljana, the taxi the hotel had sent for me had decided not to wait.
The dragon is the symbol of Ljubljana and is commemorated here on the Dragon Bridge, one of the two famous bridges in the city
The lifts were interesting at Ljubljana Station. I got into the lift, went up one level, the door opened, I didn’t get out quickly enough, the door closed and I went down again. At the lower level the door opened for a couple with a pushchair to get in, they weren’t quick enough either, the door closed and up I went again. But next time I was ready, standing right by the door and charging out as soon as they opened and a lad on a motorbike rode into the lift. I’d never seen that before either. Was he taking his motorbike on the train?
After ringing the hotel to send me another taxi it was getting late, I’d been travelling well over 12 hours. Definitely bedtime for me.
The next morning I walked from my hotel into Ljubljana city centre. After my initial trepidation about my first time in the former Yugoslavia with its broken down trains and graffiti, I had to admit that my hotel was very nice. And now as I walked into the city centre, I found Ljubljana to be a very pleasant city.
At the age of 90, Ivan Hribar, former city mayor, wrapped in the Yugoslavian flag, threw himself off the Triple Bridge to his death, no such drama in this photo of the landmark bridge
There was some sort of sports promotion going on in one of the squares encouraging people to try out volleyball or do chin ups at a bar and suchlike. I bypassed that. I walked up to the Triple Bridge that had been pointed out to me on the map by the hotel staff. This bridge connects the medieval part of the city with the new town and is the most frequently crossed bridge in Ljubljana. It has an unusual design with a pedestrian footbridge either side of the main bridge, hence Triple Bridge.
I found another square with more market stalls, the people on these stalls were advertising Belgrade and giving out free samples of alcohol. I had no intention of visiting Belgrade on this trip, I simply didn’t have the time, but I tried the free alcohol. Judging by the stuff I tried, that wasn’t a compelling reason to visit Belgrade either!
Much better was the ice cream from an ice cream parlour where I tried lemongrass sorbet and paradise chocolate which was white chocolate ice cream with bits of pomegranate and dark chocolate flakes in it. Then it was time for the castle.
View of the historical centre of Ljubljana from the castle
I spent my afternoon at Ljubljana Castle one of the main attractions in the city. A funicular takes you to the top of the hill where the castle is located. The castle was originally a medieval fortress, however the present castle dates from the 15th century onwards.
My entry ticket got me into all the museums and viewpoints so first of all I went to look in the Puppet Museum, which was quite interesting, the puppets on display were very cute. You even have chance to try your hand at being a puppeteer, I wasn’t very good. But I did enjoy the museum.
Beautiful puppets on display at the Puppet Museum in Ljubljana Castle
There was an exhibition about beekeeping in the castle, because Ljubljana had been voted Green Capital for 2016 and they were very proud of this and were trying to raise awareness about the importance of bees. I had no idea how important bees are, according to the information I read, a third of all the food in the world is attributed to the contribution of bees pollinating plants. I learn something everywhere I go.
The dragon is also a symbol of Ljubljana. This fearsome dragon ruled the castle and demanded one virgin a year as a sacrifice and when it was the king’s daughter whose time was up, the king said any man who killed the dragon could marry his daughter. St George turned up, stabbed the dragon, but then a huge hole opened in the ground and the dragon was swallowed up into that. So some say the dragon isn’t dead. What I want to know is, there are so many European countries that claim St George killed their dragon, how many dragons did he kill? If he only killed one, where did that happen? Maybe I’ll try looking it up one day and be even more baffled than I am now…
Was the Slovenian dragon slain by St George, swallowed up by the ground after a bolt of lightning or does he still haunt the city?
It’s said that on a clear day you can see a third of Slovenia from the castle. I went to the top of the viewing tower and it was a beautiful day, so I imagine I did see a third of Slovenia from up there.
In the Museum of Slovenian History which is located at the castle, they had a replica of the oldest wooden wheel in the world, found in Slovenia dating back over 5000 years. The real one is in another museum in Ljubljana. I had a look around the museum and saw the replica wheel as I wasn’t going to have time to see the original.
I did a time machine tour at the castle, which was quite entertaining, four actors told you about life in the castle throughout history. There was an actor who played St George who said that he killed the dragon, but was far too busy travelling around Europe fighting other fearsome creatures to marry the princess, so he turned down the king’s offer and went on his next dragon slaying adventure.
Castle courtyard from the viewing tower – you can see a third of Slovenia from up here
The last one was the story of a former mayor of the city, Ivan Hribar, who said he wanted to build a funicular up to the castle and also put museums and restaurants there. That’s what is up there now and the funicular too, but interestingly, the mayor really did have that vision for the castle, more than 100 years ago. He was immensely popular but someone decided he had too much power and wouldn’t let him be elected any more after several years. Then he was offered the title of mayor again at the age of 90, but he wouldn’t have had any power. He refused the offer and in protest wrapped himself in the Yugoslavian flag and threw himself off the Triple Bridge to his death. At least he was 90 years old! But not a very nice ending for such a popular mayor.
After the castle I went to have a look at the Dragon Bridge, which is the other bridge in Ljubljana that you have to see besides the Triple Bridge. It has a dragon at each corner representing the symbol of the city. I did pass a bar with some great blackboards outside, my personal favourite was about unattended children. Whoever ran the bar obviously had a good sense of humour.
A novel way of dealing with unaccompanied children!
I decided I wanted a pizza for my tea and I found a recommended pizza restaurant that proclaimed “Our doors are wide open 365 days a year except in the years of the Summer Olympic Games. Then our doors are open on 29 February as well.” I thought there must be an easier way of saying you’re open every single day than putting it this way. But seeing stuff like this written down does entertain me on my travels. There was a lot of choice in the pizza restaurant. I ordered a glass of wine, but I found it difficult to decide what pizza I wanted. I kept sending the waiter away because I still hadn’t decided. Eventually on his fourth visit to my table I placed my order.
And that was the end of my time in Ljubljana. It was a very pleasant city, but it didn’t blow me away. On the other hand, I hadn’t come to Slovenia to spend time in the cities. I’d come for the lakes and mountains and caves. Like St George, I was moving on from Ljubljana in search of my next adventure.
I travelled to Slovenia during the last week of September 2016.
I stayed at the Ahotel in Ljubljana which is approximately a 20 minute walk from the city centre. Breakfast and free parking is included in the room rate.
I visited Ljubljana Castle on a Time Machine Tour. My ticket also included entry to the castle, viewing tower, museums in the castle and return funicular journey.
I bought my inventively flavoured ice cream from Vigo Ice Cream which is located in the heart of the city centre at the corner of Stritarjeva Ulica (Street) and Mackova Ulica (Street).
I ate pizza at Foculus Pizzeria which has an extensive pizza menu including more than a dozen vegetarian options.
I travelled to Ljubljana by train from Prague with changes in Vienna and Villach (and an unscheduled change at the Slovenian border!)
For the Prague to Vienna segment I booked online with Czech Railways
For the Vienna to Ljubljana segment I booked online with Austrian Railways
You book and pay for your tickets online and print them at home.
A right pair of terrorists with their hands up at the Belfast Wall
Growing up in England in the 70s and 80s, it felt like hardly a week went by that the IRA weren’t in the news. IRA bombs in both Northern Ireland and England were constantly in the headlines and everyone was in fear in case the next bomb went off in their home town. However, following various political negotiations, things did calm down a lot in England. Gradually Northern Ireland was in the news less and less and everything seemed to have stabilised.
My first visit to Northern Ireland was in 2014 with my friend Betty, for a long weekend and as we both like to pack plenty into our trips, I’d booked plenty of things to keep us occupied, including a black cab tour which took us on a tour around the Belfast murals.
Marches continue to be a common sight through Belfast city centre
The black cab tour was a personal tour, fixed price for however many of us wanted to go, restricted only to the number that could fit in the cab, but there were just the two of us on this tour.
Our driver and guide, Steve, picked us up at our hotel in his blue cab to take us on our tour of North Belfast. Far from all the problems being over, I actually discovered during this tour that Belfast was still full of the troubles and tensions reported on the news 3 decades ago, but because there were no longer any bombs going off in mainland Britain, Northern Ireland didn’t generally make the news headlines. There were still items on the news about the marches from time to time, where the Orange Order wanted to march and follow their historical routes which passed through Belfast streets that were now Catholic areas. Other than that, most news about Northern Ireland related to fairly ordinary politics. However, Northern Ireland had hit the headlines again just before my visit to Belfast because Gerry Adams had been arrested a few days earlier. With all this in mind, we set off on our tour.
Mural depicting the legend of the Red Hand of Ulster on the side of a house on the Shankill Road estate
Steve said he wasn’t going to tell us whether he was Protestant or Catholic at the start of the tour, he was going to let us guess later. The black cab tours advertise themselves as giving a balanced view of the Northern Ireland conflict from both sides, so if I had a problem working out if he was Protestant or Catholic, he would have done a good job. Steve started off by explaining how complex the problems still were in Northern Ireland in general, illustrating this by telling us about someone brought in to try and negotiate between the two sides. Each side argued about what flag they should have and when the issue of the flag couldn’t be resolved, the arbitrator gave up, saying that if they couldn’t even come to an agreement about a flag then there was no hope for resolving anything else! This seemed to be a pattern in the stories told throughout the tour, even though these were supposedly peaceful times, no agreement could be met about anything and the conflict was still ongoing. The divide between the Protestants and the Catholics seemed just as bad as it had ever been, as I was to discover as the tour went on.
Controversial mural commemorating a Loyalist gunman on an end terrace house
We first visited the Shankill Road estate which is a Protestant part of the city to see the murals, which are painted on the side of the houses. In theory, it was safe to walk around the Shankill Road estate on your own and look at the murals without a guide; the locals could tell who the tourists were. I decided against this for a couple of reasons. Firstly, if I looked at these murals without a local explaining them there was no context to them. Secondly, I wasn’t convinced it was as safe to wander around on our own as the literature claimed. The cab drivers all know each other and are known on the estates, so whether Steve was a Protestant or a Catholic, it didn’t matter, he was happily chatting to the other driver/guides bringing tourists to look at the murals. Some of the murals depicted Celtic legends and historical figures, such as the Red Hand of Ulster and William of Orange on horseback. Others were much darker and depicted the city’s recent past, such as the memorial to a Loyalist gunman who was killed at the age of 30 and the disturbing “Lone Gunman” painted in such a way the optical illusion made you feel that his gun pointed at you wherever you were standing. If you didn’t like these murals on the side of your house, it was tough, the alternative was to live somewhere else, but it appeared that the locals were keen to live in one of the houses with the murals.
The Lone Gunman seems to be aiming his gun at you wherever you stand
After seeing the Shankill Road estate we moved on and Steve stopped to show us the high metal fences and gates that were present all over the city. He explained that these fences divided the Protestant and Catholic areas of the city and the gates were closed and locked every night and neither vehicles nor pedestrians could get through after they were locked. Some of the more dangerous areas were closed off all weekend. The roads weren’t opened under any circumstances once those gates were locked, not even for emergency vehicles. Steve said it would take you 45 minutes to drive from one side to the other once the roads were closed, so if your house was on fire, by the time the fire engine got there, it would have probably burnt down. This grim reality of life in Belfast in 2014 was a shock to me. I had no idea things were still so bad.
Our black cab tour (in a blue taxi) took us to the Belfast “Peace” Wall which extends a long way through the northern part of the city
We also saw part of the Belfast “Peace Wall”. The name is a bit of a misnomer. It’s not exactly a statement of peace. The best that could be said about it was, it divided areas of the city and prevented worse fighting than already existed. It was basically the equivalent of a Berlin Wall that kept Protestants and Catholics apart. The Peace Wall doesn’t completely surround the city; instead there are several sections that were built throughout North Belfast. It was built to segregate the city, and unlike in Berlin, and as with everything else in Northern Ireland, the sides can’t agree on whether it should stay up or come down. The general consensus in 2014 was that the violence would escalate if the wall came down. This was the same reason that roads were closed every night. Again, like the road closures, I had no idea that Belfast had a dividing wall. Berlin was synonymous with its wall, Belfast wasn’t. Maybe with all of the other things going on in Northern Ireland people hadn’t really focussed on the Peace Wall.
As I mentioned, Gerry Adams had recently been arrested which had made the news headlines and there were still protests about a particular Orange Order march that couldn’t take place in full at the moment, because they wanted to march the historic route which would provoke violence as it passed down a Catholic road. Every day the march would start and be blocked by police when it reached the Catholic area to prevent violence, but the Protestants argued it was their right to march on this historic route, even if it did now go through a Catholic area and would consequently result in rioting. It all seemed a complete mess with no resolution in sight as there was no obvious solution.
The gates are locked every night so Protestants and Catholics can’t cross into enemy territory
We then headed to Bombay Street, a Catholic part of the city that had witnessed a lot of violence in the late 1960s. The houses on Bombay Street backed onto the Belfast Wall and Steve pointed out the metal cage that was attached to the back of the houses adjacent to the wall. This was colloquially known as a “Belfast conservatory” and offered some protection from any petrol bombs or other missiles that might be hurled over the wall. This was Belfast? It sounded like Beirut!
The Belfast Conservatory is evidence of the shocking reality of living in some parts of the city
Again I was overwhelmingly shocked that things were still so bad in the city in 2014. But this was the shocking reality of living in certain parts of Belfast. Despite the danger of living in a house that backed onto the Belfast Wall, Steve said most inhabitants thought it was a privilege to live there. Bombay Street had a memorial to the terrible riots of August 1969 where the city was in the grip of bullets, petrol bombs and fire for several days. Innocent victims caught in the crossfire were shot dead; most of the houses on Bombay Street were burned to the ground.
Plastic bullets formerly used by riot police are bigger than Betty’s hands!
Steve also asked us if we’d heard of rubber and plastic bullets. I just assumed that they would be rubber or plastic versions of normal bullets, basically the same as blanks. Steve produced a couple for us to look at. It was unbelievable. Far from being the same size as normal bullets, they were enormous. Bigger than Betty’s hand. They were invented by the British specifically to deal with riots in Northern Ireland as a non-lethal alternative to traditional bullets. Unfortunately these huge missiles were difficult to control and the size of them meant if they hit someone they would cause serious injury and sometimes death. Thankfully they are no longer used by police in Northern Ireland.
We moved to another section of the Belfast Peace Wall and there was a lot of graffiti scrawled on this part of the wall. Steve gave us each a marker pen so we could add our names to it. After initially hesitating, I added my name to the wall. It seemed that everyone did this when they came on a Black Cab tour and the wall was covered in graffiti, so a couple more signatures weren’t going to make any difference. Now my name is on the Belfast Wall forever!
My name is on the Belfast Wall forever, although it’s probably faded by now!
Steve then asked us if we thought he was a Protestant or a Catholic. At first I’d been convinced he was a Protestant, but he had said a couple of things about Gerry Adams that suggested he might be a Catholic. Betty was positive he was a Protestant. I also guessed he was a Protestant, but with less conviction now. My instinct about him possibly being Catholic because of his comments about Gerry Adams proved to be correct. He was a Catholic. He also got us to put our hands up against the wall for a photo. He said that the police used to get Catholic protesters to put their hands up against the wall and stand there for hours, if he could do that for hours, we could stand there for a minute for a photo.
A couple of vandals defacing the Belfast Wall
Steve then revealed a bit more about himself and his family situation. He was a Catholic, but his wife was a Protestant and they had to live outside Belfast because it was the only place where a husband and wife of different religions could live. He said it would be dangerous to live in either the Protestant or Catholic parts of the city when they didn’t share the same religious background. Steve said his father-in-law was in the Orange Order and when he first got married his father-in-law never spoke a word to him, completely ignored him even if they were in the same room. It was only when their son was born that his father-in-law started to talk to Steve. However, Steve’s son played Gaelic football and this was labelled as a “Catholic” sport and, for this reason, his father-in-law had never been to watch his grandson play, he couldn’t risk anyone spotting him there and reporting him to the Orange Order. It all seemed very sad.
Satisfied with our vandalism!
I was also interested to know, were there atheists in Belfast? Were there people who were neither Protestant nor Catholic, that didn’t take one side or the other? Steve said everyone was either a Protestant or Catholic; Polish immigrants lived in the Catholic areas because Poland was a predominantly Catholic country and even Muslims were either Protestant Muslims or Catholic Muslims. It seemed completely ludicrous to me.
Remembering the terrible Bombay Street riots
The final part of our tour took us to the murals on the Falls Road. There was a brand new mural of Gerry Adams following his arrest which wasn’t yet finished. Then it was the end of our tour.
It was a fascinating and thought provoking tour and I’d thoroughly recommend it to anyone who visits Belfast who wants an insight into what it’s like to live there even though the Troubles are supposedly over.
The road is closed every night and not opened under any circumstances – not even for emergency vehicles
Steve said that it had only been 14 years since the Peace Treaty and you couldn’t expect the two sides to trust each other after only 14 years. My view was that if they didn’t trust each other after 14 years they never would. And if they had to lock up dividing gates every night so that people couldn’t travel between the Protestant and Catholic areas, it looked like they were no closer to trusting each other than before the peace negotiations.
At the start of the tour we were told we’d be presented with a balanced view which might make us change our opinion about what happened during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. I heard both sides of the story on the tour which Steve portrayed as fairly as anyone could have done, but nothing he said made me change my personal opinion on the conflict. Growing up in the 70s and 80s with the news filled with IRA bombings wasn’t something I was going to forget after a couple of hours on a city tour.
The problems in Northern Ireland in general and Belfast, in particular, are incredibly complex. It seemed to me that the Northern Ireland conflict had started almost 500 years ago, most people didn’t even know the origins of it, but it was still going on to this day.
Ulster mythological hero Cuchulainn depicted on a gable end
I went to the Belfast Museum in the afternoon which gave more insight into the Troubles and what was happening in Belfast at the height of the Troubles.
And going back to the safety aspect of walking around the murals of Belfast on your own, it appeared that my instinct had been correct, walking around on your own was not a good idea. Later that very same day, there was a news report that a journalist had been attacked for taking photos of the new Gerry Adams mural on the Falls Road. There were reports of something happening in Belfast almost every day, the only difference was, the reports didn’t make the headlines in England any more. But the conflict was still ongoing and still very real.
Despite all of this, I loved Belfast, I thoroughly enjoyed my time there and I would definitely go back. And the Black Cab tour was undoubtedly the highlight of my trip.
We travelled to Belfast on the first weekend in May 2014.
We went on our cab tour of the Belfast murals with Paddy Campbell’s Belfast Famous Black Cab Tours . The cab will pick you up at your accommodation and drop you off there or at a convenient location in the city centre.
We stayed in Belfast city centre at Premier Inn Belfast City Centre located in the heart of the city within easy walking distance of all major attractions.
We flew to Belfast City Airport from Leeds Bradford Airport with Flybe. Belfast City Airport is situated conveniently 4 miles from the city centre.
Steep steps and no easy paths make it hard work to get on the walls of Narikala Fortress
Are there any positives about travelling to the former Russian Republic of Georgia? In my previous posts I have written about some pretty negative experiences I had whilst I was there. Well I would say the best reason to visit Georgia is to spend time in Tbilisi.
Tbilisi was the reason I’d wanted to visit Georgia for all those years. I’d wanted to go ever since I saw Juliet Morris go there on the Travel Show in 1999, it looked like a fascinating city. And it turned out that it was.
The Mother of Georgia overlooks the city of Tbilisi
I’d ended up in Kutaisi in Georgia because it was the cheapest way to get into the country. The low cost airlines were flying there rather than into Tbilisi. However, after the theft of my iPod and my bizarre experience with the Georgian police, I got out of Kutaisi the next day and I arrived in the capital city, Tbilisi.
My journey to Tbilisi was not pleasant. I got one of the collective minibuses from Kutaisi which were cheap, but they were also cramped and dirty and uncomfortable. The owner of the first hotel I stayed at in Kutaisi took me to the place where the minibuses to Tbilisi leave from, but he ripped me off, which was a common occurrence in Georgia. I was viewed as a rich Western tourist and most of the taxi drivers and tourist establishments charged well over the odds and did their best to rip me off. In this instance, the owner short changed me, it didn’t amount to much, but even so, I don’t like being cheated and was determined he wouldn’t get any more money out of me; when I returned to Kutaisi, I’d be staying elsewhere.
The highest point in Tbilisi, Mtatsminda Hill topped by the TV Tower seen from the second highest point in the city, Narikala Hill
Anyway, the minibus to Tbilisi only cost 10 Lari, which is the equivalent of about £3. So it was definitely cheap. After my poor experience in Kutaisi, I was thankful that my next guesthouse was much better and this was also the only place I stayed during my entire time in Georgia, where the owners didn’t attempt to rip me off.
I was overcharged by another taxi driver to get to my guesthouse. I was told by the guesthouse owner that the taxi driver Mafia is the only thing the government haven’t managed to stamp out yet. The guesthouse owner took me into the city in his car one morning, because no taxi would come and pick me up because they were only looking for extortionate fares from tourists and if it’s from a local guesthouse where the owners know how much taxis really cost, they won’t pick you up.
A view of the city of Tbilisi from the Narikala Fortress
I subsequently used the Taxify App, basically the Georgian version of Uber, where they call a taxi for you, tell you the driver’s name, car and registration and the cars are fitted with trackers so they can’t cheat you. Unfortunately this App was only available in Tbilisi. But I used Taxify for the rest of the time I was in Tbilisi and found it to be an excellent service. I was also so grateful to finally find honest taxi drivers, I always gave them a big tip.
Yes, my guesthouse in Tbilisi was lovely. The beds were so comfortable. They had a layer on top of the mattress that made it really soft, the only other person I know who does that is my mother! Initially it looked like it was way off the beaten track and a long way out of the city. In reality it was only a 20 minute walk to anywhere you needed to be, although it was up a steep hill. It was actually very close to Mtatsminda Hill, the highest point in the city, so you did have a climb back up to it at the end of your sightseeing day. Despite that, if I ever did go back to Tbilisi, I would definitely stay there again.
The top of Narikala Fortress keep can only be reached by clambering on the walls
I can’t say Tbilisi felt the safest place in the world to me when I first ventured out to explore, and it is a big city, 1.5 million population. But after spending a fair bit of time there, I felt more comfortable, even when I was walking back to my guesthouse at night in the dark.
I had 3 plans for my time in Tbilisi, the cable car to Narikala Fortress, one of the sulphur baths in Tbilisi, which I covered in a previous article, and the funicular up Mtatsminda Hill.
A view of the pathway up onto Narikala Fortress walls – this was one of the better sections
First was the cable car. I bought myself a transport card for 60p and loaded it up with £1. That was more than enough to get me up the cable car and back. Then I headed up the hill. First off I went to see the statue of the Mother of Georgia.
Then I followed the signs to get to the Narikala Fortress. The fortress was the location I remembered seeing on the Travel Show, I recalled it was destroyed by an earthquake in 1827 and has only partially been restored.
I made it to the cross on the fortress keep without the aid of a handy printed map!
I could see some people at the top of a tower with a cross on the top and also people at some other towers. I could see there was no proper path to some of the towers, it was just a scramble. My view was slightly obscured, but I assumed the tower with the cross would be different because it was the main tower of the fortress.
I walked down the pathway to find the entrance where I assumed there would be properly delineated signposted footpaths with steps where appropriate and a handy printed map. Seriously had I learnt nothing during my time in Georgia? A handy printed map? What was I thinking?
How did they get up there? A treacherous path is the answer.
The Narikala Fortress was exactly the same as just about every other place I’d visited while in Georgia, stone and sand, rough paths of varying degrees of difficulty, which I presumed were graded on how brave you felt. There were steep steps with no handrail and a feeling of, “should I actually be climbing this?” but you see that everybody else does. And there are no rails to stop you, so you do too.
I climbed one part of the fortress wall, at this point I was still suffering from the delusion that there might be a proper footpath to the tower with the cross on top, I searched for one, but of course, it didn’t exist. So I followed the easiest of the rough, stone paths to the tower and then there was nothing for it but climbing the walls as best you could to get to the top. It actually was okay, I found the slippery sandy path a lot more difficult than the climbing up and down, there was plenty to hold on to on the tower walls.
A scramble up the tower walls and me and the lasses from Iran make it to the top
There were 3 lasses from Iran travelling together and they offered to help me in my climb up the tower, but I managed fine on my own. Once at the top, they took a couple of photos of me and then they went to take a selfie. I was going to offer to take a photo for them, but they invited me to join them in the shot and emailed me the photo later that afternoon. Fortress done.
I went and had my traditional sulphur bath and then headed across the road to the wine shop and did a free wine tasting with an enthusiastic sales assistant from Belarus who was eager to let me taste everything she had open. I said I liked reds, so we started on reds, then I had a shot of chacha, which is grape vodka and had a strength of 55%. I was then persuaded to try the white wines too. I didn’t take a lot of persuading, it has to be said!
View of Tbilisi from Mount Mtatsminda at night
In order to try and soak up some of the alcohol, I tried a khachapuri, which is the traditional cheese pie they made here. Puff pastry filled with a salty cheese, but not plastic string type which I was unfortunate enough to try later. However, the khachapuri was actually really nice. They charge quite a lot for them in restaurants, but I’d noticed a bakery on my way to the baths, so I called in there and got a fresh one and ate it while I was walking, it was still warm. I did really like it.
The TV Tower on Mount Mtatsminda viewed from the top of the ferris wheel in Mtatsminda Park looks pretty when it’s lit up in pink and purple lights at night
And finally, was I going to be able to fit in the funicular up to the top of Mount Mtatsminda today or not? It was starting to get dark, I didn’t know how late it ran. I didn’t need to worry. It only closes for 4 hours a day. Between 4am and 8am. And it was really close to my guesthouse, so I could walk there in 10 minutes. There’s a restaurant on the top of Mount Mtatsminda and the hill is home to Mtatsminda Park a fun fair with a ferris wheel and rollercoaster. The TV Tower is also located at the top of the funicular. The TV Tower is covered in satellite dishes so it’s not one you can go up inside like in some places, however, it is all lit up in pink lights at night, so it looks very pretty.
I rode the ferris wheel in Mtatsminda Park, the highest point in the city, to get a view of Tbilisi at night
I rode the funicular right to the top and I had a walk to the ferris wheel to start with. It looked like was still going even though it was dark. The same transport card I used for the funicular was also the card I needed to use to go on the ferris wheel. No one else seemed to be interested in going on it and I did wonder if it was closed after all, but it wasn’t, so I got an enclosed carriage to myself and some lovely views of Tbilisi all lit up at night as I went round. I could see the rollercoaster from the top of the wheel, unfortunately that definitely was closed at this time of night or I would have certainly given that a go.
Peach Martini made with a strong Georgian vodka enjoyed while soaking up the views of the city lights
After my ride on the ferris wheel, I headed back to the restaurant for a cocktail in the bar, took a seat on the terrace and had a cocktail. The cocktail I ordered was a peach martini made with a Georgian vodka which completely overpowered everything else. I didn’t have a second one. Even so, it was quite nice on the terrace overlooking the lights of Tbilisi. The only drawback was the locals are big smokers and even though it was outdoors, it was a smoky atmosphere on the terrace. As a non-smoker who has got used to everything in England now being smoke free, I find smoking antisocial and unpleasant. I just sat as far away from the smokers as I could and it didn’t bother me too much, I could enjoy my cocktail and the view. It was a lovely evening at the top of the highest peak in the city.
The following day, I decided I didn’t want a further battle by attempting to take any more transport out of Tbilisi, so I opted to stay local.
Tamada, the toastmaster illustrates the importance of wine in Georgia
I had a wander to Freedom Square and then into the old town. There were lots of statues in Tbilisi, I saw one of Tamada, the Georgian Toast Master and another of a man up a ladder lighting a lamp. It was very quiet this early in the morning, there was no one much around.
Statue of a man lighting a lamp in Tbilisi city centre
I continued my walk and found the Peace Bridge. Tbilisi’s Bridge of Peace spanning the Kura River is a wavy, bow shaped pedestrian bridge made of steel and glass and is one of the iconic features of the city. I crossed the bridge and took some photos and crossed back again into the old town.
I then went to the National Gallery which had a permanent exhibition of about 50 paintings. At least I wasn’t completely overwhelmed by the sheer volume of artwork. The temporary exhibition only had about half that number of paintings. But I enjoy art galleries and so I found it quite interesting. I went to the National Museum too, that wasn’t very exciting. I concluded the Russians must have got all the good stuff to exhibit in Moscow and St Petersburg.
Tbilisi’s Bridge of Peace
I headed back into the old town walked around where the Leaning Puppet Theatre Clock Tower of Tbilisi was, although unfortunately the museum was closed.
After my wanderings around the city, I decided now was the time I should probably have something to eat. I went in one place with interesting chandeliers made out of wine glasses and they had an extensive wine menu. I tried a couple of qvevri red wines, the first one was a bit feeble for my liking, so I had a glass of the stronger second one. It wasn’t exceptional, but it was okay.
The Leaning Puppet Theatre Clock Tower of Tbilisi looks old, but was actually built in 2010
The qvevri method is the traditional Georgian way of making wine, instead of oak barrels they use clay pots that they bury in the ground and they don’t add any sulphur or anything. I ended up getting quite a taste for the qvevri red wine, but it took a while to grow on me. Initially I didn’t think much to it.
Chandelier made of wine glasses in wine bar where I tasted my first qvevri red wine
This place also had rare Georgian cheeses and as I like my cheese I decided to give it a try. You should have seen what I got. This cheese that looked like silly string and tasted like salted plastic! They brought me a cheese that was like smoked Gouda, except I’d already told the waiter and I didn’t like smoked cheese and he said they’d bring me an alternative and they forgot! So I sent that back. The replacement was tasteless, and probably the best was a soft cheese quite like Brie except nowhere near as good. I wasn’t impressed. If this was a representation of the best the Georgian cheese industry has to offer, then after this sample, my conclusion would be that the rest of the cheeses they produce in Georgia must be absolutely revolting!
I wandered back to my guesthouse after my drink and horrible cheese meal and sat in the living room watching the Mentalist on telly that had been dubbed into Georgian. They only seemed to have one actor dubbing all the male characters from what I could tell, all the male voices in the programme were identical! The guesthouse owner brought me a glass of red wine and I had a drink.
Qvevri wine is made in the traditional method in Georgia, using clay pots like these that are buried in the ground
All in all, I did enjoy Tbilisi, it was a very nice city. However, had I known when I arrived in Georgia what I knew when I left, I would have done things differently. I think the best way to organise my trip to Georgia would have been to base myself in Tbilisi, give myself a day or so in Tbilisi to enjoy the sights there and then to just do day trips from Tbilisi on organised tours. They’re not expensive, you get to see everything and you don’t have to battle with taxi drivers and other people trying to rip you off all the time.
But it had been an experience that I wouldn’t forget. I think maybe my expectations were too high, I wasn’t prepared for how little there was to do in reality and how difficult it would be to get around. My impression was it was a poor country still trying to find its way after all those years of Soviet occupation and it was still a long way off at that time.
Some handy Georgian phrases – if you can work out how to pronounce them!
There were a couple of highlights, Davit Gareja was very good, the Caucasus Mountains around Kazbegi are beautiful and I did generally enjoy Tbilisi. I do have some positives to look back on. I can’t see me rushing back, but I never say never and, if I take my own advice, I believe any return visit will be infinitely more successful.
I travelled to Georgia during the first half of October 2016.
Narikala Fortress is at the top of Narikala Hill. You can get to the top of Narikala Hill in a modern cable car which is part of the Tbilisi public transport system. You need a public transport card to ride in the cable car which is available from any transport station in the city.
Tbilisi Public Transport Pass
Narikala Fortress is free to walk around.
Mtatsminda Hill is accessed by the steep inclined funicular. A Mtatsminda Park card is needed for the funicular. This is a different card to the Tbilisi public transport pass card. The Mtatsminda Park card is also needed to go on any of the rides at Mtatsminda Park
Mtatsminda Park pass
I tried qvevri red wine at G Vino in the heart of Tbilisi Old Town. They have an extensive wine menu. I don’t recommend the cheese!
This Georgian cheese looked like silly string and tasted like salted plastic!
Tbilisi is located approximately a three and a half hour drive from Kutaisi. Collective minibuses run frequently between the two cities.
I flew to Georgia on a Wizz Air flight to Kutaisi from Budapest, Hungary. This was a cheaper alternative to flying to the capital, Tbilisi.
I flew to Budapest from Manchester Airport with Jet2.
If you ever are in Georgia – take care! Read about my encounter with the Georgian police when I was unlucky enough to be the victim of a pickpocket. Reporting a Theft – A Cautionary Tale
Sulphur Baths of the Abanotubani District gave the city of Tbilisi its name
I was determined I was going to go to a traditional sulphur bath while I was in Tbilisi. I didn’t want to miss out on this genuine experience because it’s one of the things that Tbilisi is renowned for. Abanotubani is the ancient district of the city where the sulphur baths are located, the discovery of the hot springs was apparently the reason for building a city in this location.
I’d heard the sulphur baths were quite an experience. I was planning on having a massage, but I’d heard they were not exactly gentle and with my poor, painful shin, a remnant from the injury I suffered on the river crossing in the Juta Valley in the mountains the previous day, I didn’t know that I could take it.
Stream running through the Abanotubani district of Tbilisi
I’d been wandering around the sulphur baths earlier and when I passed one, they called me in and invited me to look at a private room which was £10 an hour. They charged another £7 for a massage. I looked in another place where they weren’t so friendly and charged twice the price, so I went back to King Erekle’s Bath where they’d showed me round and I got a private room for an hour and also booked a massage. I was asked if I wanted a man or a woman to massage me. What kind of service were they offering here? I’ve had male massage therapists before, but that’s been in proper spas, not these bathhouses where the masseuse rubs you down with an exfoliating mitt and then washes you with soap and you can’t wear your bikini. I certainly didn’t want a bloke doing that! So I asked for a woman. They told me 15 minutes and the masseuse would be there (sorry I can’t call her a massage therapist), meantime I should have a shower and a soak in the sulphur bath.
You could smell the sulphur, it is supposed to be very good for your skin. The water is very hot! It’s like when you run a bath and it’s slightly too hot, but you don’t want to put cold water in and cool it down too much so you think, it will soon cool down and put up with it for a few minutes. Except this water never gets cooler and you feel like a boiled lobster! I could only manage a few minutes at a time and then I would get out and have a shower with cold water. Even the cold water wasn’t freezing cold, but it was cool.
Baths fit for a king?
The masseuse arrived, pretty well what I expected, a very large woman in her 60s wearing a black strapless dress and carrying a bucket. She took the stuff out of her bucket and told me to get in the hot sulphur bath and she had a shower. Thankfully, she kept her dress on. Then she got me to lay on the marble slab and got the bucket, filled it with the hot water from the sulphur bath and threw it over me. She started with the exfoliating mitt and then threw more hot water over me, did the same on my back and then she started washing me with soap. There was so much soap that when I turned over I slid down the marble slab, but there was a bit of a wall at the end which was useful to stop me sliding off completely.
She massaged my back and my legs a bit, the pressure was okay, not as hard as I thought it might be. Certainly not like the massage I had in Singapore where I thought I was going to die!
Boiling hot sulphur bath in my private room
Then came the moment for her to throw buckets of hot water from the bath over me again to get rid of all the soap. She asked me to sit up, I’d read about this, this was where she was about to tip a whole bucket of water over my head. Which she did. What I didn’t expect was her to then to start to wash my hair. And if my lugholes were dirty, they certainly weren’t by the time she’d finished. Another couple of buckets of water over my head and then she did a second shampoo. And then she tipped a final couple of buckets of hot sulphuric water over my head. I thought I’d probably end up going home with green hair. After this holiday, that would absolutely not have surprised me. Actually though, that night my hair felt lovely, it was really soft. And as an added bonus, it didn’t turn green.
I was pleased I went to the sulphur baths. It was good to soak in the boiling sulphuric water. As a grown woman, I shouldn’t really be wanting someone else to give me a wash, but it’s all part of the Abanotubani ritual. The baths certainly weren’t fancy, but it felt more a more genuine experience that way. This was an ancient tradition of Tbilisi.
Doesn’t my hard marble massage table look comfortable? Good job there was a wall at the end otherwise I would have slid off with the slippery soap!
However, one word of warning. I thought I might go back to the sulphur baths on another day, but when I did go back, they were full. People are very nice to you when they’re not busy and are trying to get customers in, but when they don’t have space, they’re not only not interested, they’re downright rude. That was certainly my experience on my return to King Erekle’s Bath for a possible second bath.
Walkway by King Erekle’s Baths
I did try a more traditional spa experience near Telavi in the Kakheti region in Eastern Georgia.
I’d booked to go to a winery near Telavi which also had a wine spa, so I booked some treatments as well as a wine tour and wine tasting. The wine tour lasted 10 minutes and consisted of the hotel manager, who was wearing jeans and a hoodie, showing me the barrels and tanks and clay pots.
At least my tasting of 7 wines, followed by a glass of my favourite took some time, accompanied by bread, cheese and walnut slices in grapes. I’d never had walnut slices in grapes before, but they were delicious. And I tasted the first decent qvevri white wine I’d had in Georgia, however, the qvevri red was the best and I had a second glass of that. This place was expensive and got rave reviews, and while it was okay, it wasn’t very grand by European standards.
The Falcon and Pheasant Fountain in Tbilisi – according to legend both birds fell in the hot springs here
When it got to time for my massage, I had to go and find the manager to ask him where I needed to go instead of someone coming to get me and they were hardly swamped, there was me and a party of four eating lunch!
I’d booked a full body and head massage with a wine bath, followed by a reflexology massage. The wine bath was hot water in a stainless steel bath with red wine added to it! I soaked in it for 10 minutes.
The massage was nice, but then I wanted my reflexology massage and was told I’d had it and it had been combined. I said I hadn’t had the full amount of time I was supposed to be paying for and I knew what a reflexology massage was too, so I got another half hour, but after having a row with the manager about it, I was hardly relaxed. It was expensive too, but it was yet another example of an inferior establishment in Georgia trying to take advantage of “rich” Western tourists.
Comparing the experience I’d had in Tbilisi to the one in Telavi, I would say, definitely do the traditional sulphur baths in Tbilisi. I have been to a lot of spas around the world and the one in Telavi was not in my Top 10, although soaking in a bath of red wine was a new experience for me! It wasn’t worth the journey to Telavi to do that though and the massage was certainly nothing special. I will say that the lunch was quite nice and the wines were good quality. But again, it wasn’t worth going to Telavi for.
More sulphur baths in the Abanotubani District
However, I did enjoy my sulphur bath and massage in Tbilisi. It was a genuine Georgian experience. I was in a traditional sulphur bath house by the river in the Atanubani District of the capital and I would recommend trying it out if you’re in Tbilisi. It is one of the things that you should experience here. Just hope you turn up at a quiet time when the staff are trying to draw customers in and then you won’t get the rude attitude I got when they were busier. It would be a shame if that put you off.
In case you’re wondering if Telavi itself is worth visiting, whilst in Telavi I also went to a small winery and a palace.
The lady who ran the guesthouse in Telavi, which was a comfortable guesthouse with a decent breakfast, told me I’d need a day to look around the town and said she had a driver who could take me round for some extortionate price. I’d had enough of being taken advantage of because everyone thought I was a rich Westerner, so I politely declined and walked into the town on my own. And there was no way you needed a day to look round there. I got a smelly, broken down taxi (which are generally the only kind available in Georgia) to take me to the winery and palace.
The entrance garden at Tsinandali Palace
I was told I should have a wine tour even if I’d been to other wineries, because then you get to see the qvevri method of wine making. The qvevri method is the traditional Georgian way of making wine, instead of oak barrels they use clay pots and they don’t add any sulphur or anything. Except there’s nothing really to see and they don’t tell you much either. The only thing I learned was that these clay pots they ferment the wine in are buried underground. I was shown around the tiny museum and saw the oak barrels and the clay pots in the ground. The wine was fermenting at that time. They only made white qvevri wine at this winery, which is an amber colour and tastes like sherry. It wasn’t my favourite. I tried 3 wines that were made French style. They were okay, none of them blew me away.
I then went next door to the Chavchavadze Palace, which wasn’t what I’d call a palace. It actually looked like a plantation house you’d find in the American Deep South or the Caribbean. It was the home of Georgian nobleman, diplomat and poet, Alexandre Chavchavadze and the house is now a museum with some original furniture. I looked around the half dozen rooms of the house that you can see, had a walk around the very pleasant and quiet grounds and ended up in the bar, sampling more wine. I was in the wine region, so it seemed the logical thing to do.
The home of Alexandre Chavchavadze looks more like a southern plantation house than a palace
After the rave reviews from Lonely Planet about the palace, I was expecting more. It was pleasant enough, but it was hardly worth the journey out to Eastern Georgia. So I wouldn’t particularly recommend visiting Telavi and its environs if you come to Georgia.
It had been my experience in general, every tourist attraction in Georgia featured in the guidebook was overhyped. I suppose they need to be, otherwise no one would come here! I sound like a right whinger, don’t I? It had just been really frustrating battling to try and get anywhere and not get ripped off.
When I went back to Tbilisi in a shared taxi the next day, for once the taxi was fairly tidy and the driver wasn’t a total maniac. I was first to the taxi so I grabbed the front seat, so I wasn’t cramped in the back. This bloke came along about 20 minutes later and opened the front door and tried to get me to sit in the back because he wanted to sit in the front. I refused to move. I was not going to sit for an hour and a half in the middle on the back seat because he wanted the front seat. That’s what I mean about everything being a battle. It was very stressful. But I was going back to Tbilisi which was somewhere I was starting to enjoy and I was certainly confident finding my way around there now.
I travelled to Georgia during the first half of October 2016.
I had my sulphur bath and massage at King Erekle’s Baths in the Abanotubani District of Tblisi.
Telavi is located in the Kakheti region of Eastern Georgia, approximately 2 hours from Tbilisi. Collective taxis and minibuses travel between the two destinations regularly.
I had my spa treatments and wine tasting at Schuchmann Wines winery, hotel, restaurant and spa. Schuchmann Wines is a short taxi ride away from the centre of Telavi.
You can also taste wine and tour the historic Chavchavadze Palace at the Tsinandali Estate located a 15 minute taxi ride from central Telavi.
If you ever are in Georgia – take care! Read about my encounter with the Georgian police when I was unlucky enough to be the victim of a pickpocket. Reporting a Theft – A Cautionary Tale
I was venturing away from Tbilisi for a couple of days to Stepantsminda or Kazbegi, as it’s often known, in the Caucasus Mountains.
I noticed the travel agency I’d gone to Davit Gareja with were doing tours to Kazbegi the following day. I asked if they did transfers, they said they didn’t, but I could book on a tour and then just stay there. For £20 I’d have a comfortable transfer and there would be a couple of stops along the way and an included journey to the church on the top of the hill. It was a no brainer. A comfortable, new, clean Mercedes minivan instead of one of the grotty public minibuses? It was well worth paying £20 for. And it was one less public minibus I’d have to take.
Zhinvali Reservoir on the Georgian Military Highway
I was up early to go to Kazbegi and because it’s a popular tour there were 3 minibuses. I was on the one with the English guide, with the Austrian lady again.
View of the Towers of the Assumption Church from the top of Ananuri Fortress
We stopped at the Ananuri Fortress first where there are 2 churches and a tower to climb. There are very few barriers up in these buildings in Georgia, basically if you can find a way to climb up a tower, you can climb it. So I climbed it. I did have to watch my step, there was nothing to stop you from climbing the tower, but also no proper steps up there either and once at the top there were huge holes in the floor and nothing to stop you falling through them. You just had to be careful.
Decorative entrance to the Assumption Church at Ananuri
After our stop at the fortress, we got back in the minibus to go over the mountain pass. There’s a ski resort at the top of the pass called Gudauri, built by the Austrians, so it looks quite smart. You have brilliant views of the mountains from there and it’s also the location of the Russia-Georgia Friendship Monument, commonly known as the Peace Wall. This circular wall built in 1983 on the Georgian Military Highway overlooking the Devil’s Valley has been painted with brightly coloured murals representing scenes from Georgian history. It was worth the climb along the road to see it up close and there wasn’t too much treacherous clambering to do here either! All tour buses stop here, so there were several market stalls selling honey and hats, scarves and gloves.
The circular Russia-Georgia Friendship Monument at the highest point of the Georgian Military Highway
Then it was on to Kazbegi. There were jeep transfers to the Holy Trinity Church at Gergeti which overlooks Mount Kazbegi, the third highest mountain in Georgia. We stopped off at a restaurant first to order lunch, but since I was staying in Kazbegi I wasn’t planning to eat in a restaurant chosen by the tour company. So I just waited for everyone else and we transferred to the jeeps.
Bright murals depicting Georgian history decorate the Russia-Georgia Friendship Monument
The jeeps were, in fact, Mitsubishi minivans and they were all right hand drive. In Georgia, they got hold vehicles as cheaply as they could and didn’t pay extra to buy left hand drives, so I came across a few right hand drive vehicles while I was there. I was sitting in the back, but this Polish lass said she was scared sitting in the front, so I said I’d swap with her and sit in the front seat. Most drivers in Georgia are completely mad. The Austrian lady from the tour to Davit Gareja made me laugh when she mentioned her minibus ride the previous day. She said there wasn’t a middle lane, but the minibus driver had made a middle lane! Our driver was worse! You’re on these really bumpy stone roads, they’re not even gravel. I have driven on these types of roads before, but here you’ve got all the animals on the road and they really don’t look wide enough for vehicles to pass, they looked like single track roads. Not only was our driver passing other vehicles coming from the opposite direction, he was also overtaking them! I took a very sharp intake of breath on the return journey when I could see two vehicles coming in the opposite direction and our driver decided that was the right moment to overtake the minivan in front. The Polish lass would not have liked being in the front for that!
View of the Devil’s Valley from the Peace Wall near Gudauri
It was a long drive up there and 5km on an appalling road, with an equally appalling driver, seemed to take forever. Although I have to say that I wouldn’t have been so keen to hike up there, it was a very long way.
A perfect view of Mount Kazbegi, the third highest mountain in Georgia
It was beautiful up there, a perfect view of Mount Kazbegi from the church, a great view of the Caucasus Mountains from the other side. Looking down from one side you could see the town of Stepantsminda below and the mountains beyond. On the other side I got a marvellous view of Mount Kazbegi on this clear, sunny day. I had a quick look inside the iconic 14th century Holy Trinity Church and then climbed onto the wall to get a photo of me with Mount Kazbegi behind me. It was very windy by the church whichever side of it you were. I was standing on a wall and suddenly this gust of wind came out of nowhere and almost knocked me off my feet. I was lucky not to fall off the wall. On the other side of the church I looked like I was about to get blown off the mountain down into the valley below the way the strong winds were blowing my clothes. After a good look round and photos we headed back to the minivan and our death wish driver for the return journey. I’m writing this, so I obviously survived the drive back…
The iconic Gergeti Holy Trinity Church
I asked the guide what I should do if I was spending the day in Kazbegi tomorrow. He recommended a 10 hour return hike to the glacier. No thank you! I’ve seen plenty of glaciers in Canada, Alaska, New Zealand, Austria, etc. I felt there was no need to hike for 10 hours to see one in Georgia. Besides which, I’d seen the hiking trails in the Caucasus. 10 hours for Georgian people probably means 14 hours for me! So I asked at the guesthouse where I was staying and they said they did tours to a waterfall and a nearby valley where you could hike. So that was my plan for the next day.
I almost got blown off the wall in the high winds
My guesthouse in Kazbegi was okay. There was a balcony where I sat drinking semi-sweet Georgian red wine (which wasn’t bad) and looking at Mount Kazbegi, the third highest mountain in Georgia. There are worse views. No, it was a beautiful day, not a cloud in the sky and the view of the mountain was amazing.
Enjoying the view of Mount Kazbegi and the distant Holy Trinity Church whilst sipping semi-sweet red wine on my balcony
I was chatting to a German lad at breakfast before I went out the next day and I said I’d found it difficult getting around Georgia. He recommended hitchhiking! And he was being serious! I don’t hitchhike. I’m a woman travelling on my own and I don’t think it’s safe. I don’t pick up hitchhikers either. As a woman on my own I think I have to make my safety a priority.
I was a passenger for many miles along very bumpy roads in this old Lada 4×4
He said you could end up in places where you had no other choice than to hitchhike. I said I just wouldn’t get myself into that situation where I was stranded and needed to hitchhike. He said you might be somewhere beautiful and waiting for the sunlight to be right for a photograph and then after that the last bus had gone and you’d be stranded. As far as I’m concerned, there is no photo in the world worth getting stranded for!
Gveleti Waterfall in the dry season
I just did the walk to the Gveleti Waterfall in the morning. The bloke who ran the guesthouse took me there in his 4×4 Lada van which was so old it had a choke! He pointed out the trail, which his son had told me was “normal” and then offered to come with me if I was unsure. I would have managed on my own, but I would have been pretty slow and it would have been a struggle. Normal? Not my idea of a normal trail. I had quite a lot of help over the steep parts with the bloke holding my hand and my arm to stop me falling. But it was a remote location, which I really liked, the waterfall was lovely and it was a gorgeous day.
Sunlight reflects off the cross on the road to Gveleti Waterfall
On the way back, we stopped off on the road at a cross and up in the mountains was a church. I could just about see it up in the mountains in the distance, but didn’t manage to get a photo of it. I settled for a photo of the cross instead.
The hiking trail to Black Mountain looks easy until you have to cross the river and there are no bridges
In the afternoon I went to the Juta Valley, which is very beautiful. It’s a very long and bumpy road to get there, but the Lada van seemed to be able to cope with the rough terrain. I got out of the car, was pointed in the right direction to get to the trail head and I set off on my hike.
You can see the Black Mountain and a glacier and the trail isn’t steep as it follows the valley. It was a lovely sunny day, I was enjoying my walk and thinking that spending a day in Kazbegi had been a good idea after all, because it is gorgeous. That was until it came to the stream crossings. Was there a bridge? Don’t be silly! Stepping stones in a helpful position? Of course not! I got some help across the first crossing, but slipped on the second one, which I am prone to do. I don’t mind getting wet socks much, in this weather they were going to dry out really quickly, but there were so many big rocks in the river, I bashed my right knee on one of them and my left shin on another. My shin, in particular was very painful and a right mess that night. Would it really be too much of an effort to secure a couple of planks of wood over the river? Horses go along that trail, so you wouldn’t even need people to carry the wood to the river, the horse could carry it.
This was as close as I got to the glacier on my hike
However, since I could pretty well guarantee that was going to be my last ever hike in the Caucasus Mountains I decided to carry on for a while, but my turning back point would be when I came across another river crossing with no bridge. So I got as close to the Black Mountain as the trail took me and then it started to turn back. The owner’s son hadn’t made it clear whether this was a circular route, so I wasn’t sure, but then, there it was, another river crossing with no bridge. That was where I turned back. The only bridge on the river had been put there by the proprietors of a café. You had to cross the river to get to the café and they had obviously decided that without a bridge nobody would venture there. I didn’t even bother when they had provided a bridge, so I imagine their assumption that no bridge would equate to no customers was correct.
My fateful hike to Black Mountain in the Juta Valley
When I got back to the other river crossings, two really close together, I got some help to get across because there were loads of people there. I went in ankle deep with one foot and my sock got wet again, but I didn’t care about that. As long as I didn’t have a matching bashed shin on my right leg too. They really should put a bridge in. It’s a very popular trail and everyone was struggling to get across the river. And although the Caucasus Mountains are beautiful, they’re very similar to mountain regions in other parts of the world, so it isn’t like if you don’t come here you’ll never see scenery like it anywhere else.
Dramatic jagged peaks and a distant glacier in the Caucasus Mountains
The next day I left Kazbegi and it had an extremely unpromising start. The first minibus to Tbilisi out of Kazbegi goes at 7am, so I was up at 6am, the guesthouse owner transported me and my suitcase to the main road where the minibuses go from, we were there at 6.50am. The 7 o’clock minibus had been full and gone early! Seems everyone was desperate to get out of Kazbegi! The 8 o’clock one would leave early if it was full. Of course that didn’t happen. I was sitting in a freezing cold minibus for over an hour before it finally set off. At that moment in time I really hated Georgia! We’d only gone a couple of kilometres down the road and the minibus driver turned round. What the hell was he doing? He pulled into a petrol station, had a quick conversation with someone there and then took off again. He pulled over a couple of times to chat to someone in the road and also pulled over so a passenger could get a bottle of water out of her bag! I just despair. However, I did eventually get back to Tbilisi.
Flying off into the Caucasus Mountains
And I’d seen the Caucasus Mountains. You can’t go to Georgia and not visit the Caucasus Mountains or you would always wonder what they were like. Now I won’t have to wonder.
I travelled to Georgia during the first half of October 2016.
I travelled to Kazbegi on a day trip from Tbilisi with Holidays in Georgia travel agency located at 8 Kote Apkhazi Street, in Tbilisi city centre. This day trip stopped at Zhinvali Reservoir, Ananuri Fortress, the Russia-Georgia Friendship Monument and included a tour up to the Gergeti Holy Trinity Church.
Stepantsminda is approximately a 3 hour drive from Tbilisi.
I stayed at Anano Guesthouse in the centre of Stepantsminda. The guesthouse offer transfers to the local attractions for a fixed price. I took transfers to the Juta Valley to hike to the Black Mountain and to Gveleti Waterfall.
My ensuite room at Anano Guesthouse with wonderful views of the surrounding Caucasus Mountains
I flew to Georgia on a Wizz Air flight to Kutaisi from Budapest, Hungary. This was a cheaper alternative to flying to the capital, Tbilisi.
I flew to Budapest from Manchester Airport with Jet2.
I also used Holidays in Georgia to go on a day trip to Davit Gareja from Tbilisi. Read about my experience. Davit Gareja Cliff Monastery Complex
If you ever are in Georgia – take care! Read about my encounter with the Georgian police when I was unlucky enough to be the victim of a pickpocket. Reporting a Theft – A Cautionary Tale
They knew how to decorate their monastic cave cells 1200 years ago!
I’d made my way to the capital of Georgia, Tbilisi. Today I was doing a day trip from Tbilisi to Davit Gareja. I had it on my list of possible things to do and a whole day trip with a local travel agency was £20.
At half past eight in the morning I walked from my guesthouse into the city centre to the travel agency to meet the minibus that would take me to Davit Gareja. For a Friday there wasn’t much traffic about at that time in the morning.
Monastic cells built into the cliff
The tour to Davit Gareja was good. Going on a tour means that you’re in a clean, comfortable, air conditioned, Mercedes minivan with no smoking allowed, so you’re travelling in comfort. By Georgian standards, and compared with the local minibus I’d endured to travel from Kutaisi to Tbilisi the day before, it was super luxury!
Davit Gareja is a monastery complex built into the cliffs which was founded in the 6th century by St David, an Assyrian monk.
Tower in the central courtyard of the main monastery building
It was as well I went on a tour because the complex is large; there are lots of different paths that lead you round the back of the cliff where there are more caves that monks inhabited. I’d have never found my way round on my own. I’d have had difficulty managing the trails on my own too. Apparently we took the difficult way up and the easy way down. I wouldn’t say the way down was that easy, but I would concede it was easier than the way up.
We started out by going in to the front of the complex. This had been the main building of the monastery and there were several caves that had been built into the rock face, visible from the monastery, although there was quite a lot of excavation work going on here.
In the main part of the monastery at the start of the tour
The guide was speaking in Russian and English, but his command of English wasn’t brilliant, so those of us who didn’t speak Russian only got half the story of what we were looking at. But the guide helped me on the trail a lot and took some nice photos for me too. Getting the help I needed on the trail was more important than getting lots of information about the complex. When I said I was from England, he said these trails were difficult for English people; Georgian people were used to them. And I come from a place where we have no hills. We’re below sea level where I live. So it doesn’t prepare me particularly well for mountains!
Central complex of the monastery from above and the Georgian Badlands beyond!
Thankfully it was too cold for snakes. Apparently there are a lot of poisonous snakes there in the summer. If I’d known that in advance I might not have booked the tour. I’m frightened of snakes and the thought of poisonous ones in the wild that can appear out of nowhere while you’re walking along the hiking trails is particularly alarming. So it was a relief it was too cold for them. It certainly wasn’t too cold for me though. It was early October and I was plenty warm enough in shorts and a sleeveless top. And I feel the cold.
On the cliff dwellings trail with Azerbaijan behind me
When we went on the other side of the cliff, we could see Azerbaijan. There were a lot of white posts and they marked the border, which is heavily disputed in this area. I could see a building in the distance; that must have been the border post.
If you look closely you can see the white posts that are the border with Azerbaijan and the border post building
The other side of the cliff was also where they had the painted caves that were around 1200 years old. These monastic cells were beautifully decorated with well-preserved frescoes. There were several paths around this side of the cliff, leading to different caves on different levels. It wasn’t really necessary to go along every path and view all of the caves, so the guide took us to a few of them with the best preserved frescoes and then we headed back over to the other side of the cliff.
1200 year old portrayal of the Last Supper
There were plenty of lookout towers throughout the complex and you could hike up to any you wanted to. There were rough trails winding around both sides of the entire cliff and you could go on any of them, so you could access any of the lookout towers for great views of the surrounding countryside.
You can’t even see where the hiking trail goes here!
This area of Georgia is desert and it actually looked a lot like the Badlands in North America. Lots of different coloured rocks, layered up in the hillsides. I got chatting to an Austrian lady that day and also a lad from Syria helped me on the trail going down. He asked how old I was and said I was doing really well on the trail when a lot of the younger lasses on the tour hadn’t done the walk at all. He held my hand going down some of the trickier spots, although I think I was helping him as much as he was helping me because he was slipping and sliding on the loose rock. I think that was more to do with his shoes than anything. There were steps in places and it wasn’t too bad going down. Having said that, I did have my walking boots on, I wouldn’t have wanted to attempt the trails in any other footwear. We did meet a woman who had blisters and couldn’t get her shoes on, so she was doing the trail in flip flops! Madness!
The perilous hiking trail and the monastery cells in the cliffside
But all in all, it was quite a good day. After our hike we had a bit of a break and ate lunch. We called at a supermarket on the way to Davit Gareja because there were no café facilities there, so that we could buy a few snacks to keep us going, but one enterprising young man was operating a mobile tea and coffee shop out of the boot of his Beetle! I thought he only had coffee, but he had several varieties of tea as well. It was nice to have a cup of green tea after my walk.
An enterprising lad selling hot drinks from his car in the middle of nowhere!
We stopped at a place that did free wine tasting on the way back. This did become quite a regular occurrence during my time in Georgia. They gave you a full glass of every wine you wanted to taste, after the first one I only had small amounts of the other two. It was really cheap £1.50 for a litre. It was drinkable and I did regret not buying any, although it certainly wasn’t stunning wine. But then, what could I expect for £1.50?
Hiking down the long stairway back to the monastery
I was planning to stay in the city centre for a while after the tour before going back to my guesthouse, but after the long journey back to Tbilisi, our 5 o’clock finish turned out to be nearer to 7 o’clock and I was tired out. The travel agency certainly gave me my money’s worth. So I just grabbed a bagel and headed back to the guesthouse ready for my early start the next day.
I travelled to Georgia during the first half of October 2016.
I went on a day trip to Davit Gareja from Tbilisi with Holidays in Georgia travel agency located at 8 Kote Apkhazi Street, in Tbilisi city centre.
Davit Gareja is approximately a 2 hour drive from Tbilisi. There are no facilities at the monastery complex (apart from the Coffee Beetle!) Bring supplies.
I flew to Georgia on a Wizz Air flight to Kutaisi from Budapest, Hungary. This was a cheaper alternative to flying to the capital, Tbilisi.
I flew to Budapest from Manchester Airport with Jet2.
Everyone should take a trip to the Caucasus Mountains if they visit Georgia. Read about my journey there. Into the Caucasus Mountains
If you ever are in Georgia – take care! Read about my encounter with the Georgian police when I was unlucky enough to be the victim of a pickpocket. Reporting a Theft – A Cautionary Tale
