Thats right folks if ya love cheese Georgia is the place to be. They love the stuff, its dripping off everything you order. The choicest dish is Khachapuri, basically its a round piece of flat bread stuffed with cheese. Its awesome, and with the risk of sounding very Australian some Vegimite would be the perfect addition to this fine dish.
Enough about food though, lets get down top the serious busines of sport. Simon and myself were lucky enough to get tickets to the European qualifier between Georgia and Italy. As soon as we found it was against those cheating Italians (no I still dont hold a grudge) we had to get tickets right then and there. For the bargain price of 15lari (about $7) we found ourselves that night up in the nose bleeds surrounded by the red and white army of Georgia. Now we only had one problem with the night and that was the serious lack of beer at the game, thats right NO BEER!!!! Thankfully we did have some prior warning and had polished of a couple of beers and a bottle of vodka in the restaurant before hand with some new found friends. Anyway I suppose you want to know the result, well the Italians won 4-1. Unfortunatly one of the Georgian players was sent off for what we thought was a very minor foul. The strange thing was that none of the supporters seemed to really care that the Italians won, I actually think that Simon and myself were the most dissapointed people there.
Ok enough about football, we did actually see some stuff while in the country. Tiblisi is a fantastic city set amongst mountains with a beautiful river running through it. The city is full of great little Orthodox churches and one of the great things to see is the Georgians furiously crossing themselves everythime the pass one. I mean it must get a bit annoying after a while, especially when your on a crowded bus and everyone starts at the same time. We got out of Tiblisi for a couple of days and made our way up to Kazbegi set high in the greater Caucases. Now this place was cold brrrrrrr, for the first time of this trip the thermals where brought up from the bottom of the bag. But what a beautiful place, there are some awesome hikes to do. A great little warm up is to a Tsminda Sameba Church on top of a Mt Kazbek(pictured).
We then made our way south to Varzia to view the monastary carved into the side of a mountain. What a great place you could literally spend an entire day crawling around in the tunnels. We were also lucky enough to witness a service, those Georgian priests have got a set of lungs on em. Our guest house was also a highlight, it had a massive a indoor pool heated from the underground reservoir (did smell a bit though). After asking around about how to get to Akhaltsihe we were actually offered a ride from one of the local constabulary. Normaly we wouldn't trust the police in any of these post soviet countries but this guy had Criminal Police written on the back of his jacket so at least he was honest about it. Our other travelling companions turned out to be the local judge and a lawyer, quite auspicious company for couple of vangabonds like us. We really must have had our helpless faces on that day because when we reached Akhaltsikhe they whisked us off to a local resteraunt for lots of delicious cheesy dishes, plus the judge called in a few favours and got us a room in the top hotel in town for next to nothing, and if that wasnt enough we then had one of the most delicious meals ever with all the staff. Georgian hospitality is amongst the best in the world and it was with a tear in the eye as we crosses the border into Turkey.
