Back in Tbilisi

Oct 13 2011

Ron and I left for the airport on Monday Oct 10^th to fly to Tbilisi. When we arrived we discovered that our plane would be late due to bad weather in San Francisco. To make a long story short, we could not make our connection in SF for Munich so we came back home and caught the flights the following day, Tuesday the 11^th.  I had completely emptied the refrigerator before leaving since we are to be gone for almost two months. So we had nothing to eat. We dined out for dinner, breakfast and ate lunch at the airport the following day.  

We caught a 1:00 p.m. flight to SF, had a six hour layover, then caught a flight to Munich and had another five hour layover before flying into Tbilisi. We spent 30 hours in transit, arriving at our hotel at 5:00 a.m. on Thursday. Our former driver, Gia, offered to pick us up at the airport. It was wonderful to see his smiling face when we emerged from collecting some of our luggage. One bag didn’t make it. We managed to sleep for a couple of hours then got up and had breakfast. We are in the older part of the Betsy Hotel. The two previous stays were in the newer section. We have a pleasant room with one wall of windows overlooking the city. We have a bathtub/shower which is not available in the newer section. I love taking a bath so was excited to see one in our room. My joy was short lived however. I discovered that the plumber who installed it was a knucklehead. He put the faucet at the end of the tub where your back rests, the slanted end of the tub. So it is impossible to lean back while the water is filling the tub. If you turn the water off and scoot down under the faucet you can relax but you have to be careful not to bump your head when you sit up. How do I know this? I bumped my head and manoschevitz it hurts. The other wend of the tub is narrow as your feet don’t need the width and there is a knob in the tub at that end that you turn to close the plug so it was impossible to use that end for my back. It also is not slanted but straight up and down.

Ah Georgia! 

After breakfast I walked with Ron to his office to see where he worked. It is close by, maybe 15 minutes by foot. Our friend James Wall got Ron and me to start walking for exercise when he visited us this summer and I truly hope to walk all over Tbilisi this trip as we will not have a driver as we did before. Luckily the Betsy is located near downtown, high on a hill overlooking the city. I can walk to the main drag easily and also to the metro. It is a steep climb coming back up the hill but it is all good exercise. 

October 15, 2011

We are sleeping quite well for the most part. I did wake up at 4:00 this morning but was able to get back to sleep around 6:00 and slept until almost 9:00. The weather was beautiful yesterday and today. Sunny but not too hot. Since we didn’t bring hot weather clothes I am grateful. We have made connection with many friends already. Yesterday while Ron was working I had lunch and ran errands with my dear friend Steph from Minnesota. Last night we had dinner with 13 people we had met through IWA when we were living here. Today, Saturday we had lunch  with Lily, her four year old daughter Adey and her nanny Fantanesh. All three are from Ethiopia but Lily has lived in the US for many years and works here for the World Bank. We met over a year ago and became fast friends. Tonight we will eat at the hotel.  

Ron and I are walking a lot. One of my goals is to do a lot of walking for the time we are here and hopefully be more fit by the time we leave in December. Yesterday we tried to find a better path for Ron to walk to work. We walked for 45 minutes and ended up going to the Radisson for a decent cup of coffee before coming home. Yesterday afternoon we tried to find a gallery that we like here that had moved to our current neighborhood so we walked another 45 minutes. Later we walked to dinner, a 20 minute walk. Yeah!