Snapshots of Georgia

From Gori, we drove up the Georgian Military Road to Stepantsminda near the Russian border, a suitably romantic-sounding name for a road which, to quote Wikipedia, ‘follows the traditional route used by invaders and traders through the ages’. Its full length is 212 kilometres, running from Tbilisi to Vladikavkaz, just across the border. Its highest point, the Jvari pass, is at an altitude of 2379 meters (7815 feet). It skirts the disputed/occupied territory of South Ossetia for much of the time, although there was no sign of conflict from the road. (We did drive past a large camp for internally displaced persons on the main Tbilisi-Batumi highway, however). 

Many trucks ply the route through Georgia from Russia to Armenia, so there was often overtaking to do, but other than that it wasn’t a particularly tricky route to drive (as a passenger, haha) and offers some beautiful scenery as it winds through the Caucasus mountains. Most of the photos below are from our return journey, starting in the north, since I was sitting on the better side of the car for photos on the way back.

An otherworldly landscape on the side of the road near Stepantsminda with... cow?

I actually like the whatever that wooden thing is in the foreground, sort of gives a scale to the majesty of the mountains and river valley

The Russia-Georgian friendship monument (ironic), near the highest part of the road

We happened upon a large flock of what I think are turkeys (?) on a very rough back road on the way to the Kakheti wine region




A lonely outpost in the mountains

I like how this little gangster looks like he’s wearing a donkey disguise

Ananuri Fortress. I wished we would have stopped here, but we thought we wouldn’t have time to fit it in along with our visit to Alaverdi Monastery later in the afternoon. It turns out Alaverdi took hardly any time to see, so we could have done both, or just Ananuri, which has a beautiful location on the Aragvi River. Next time, I suppose.

The Zhinvali Reservoir, a beautiful man-made lake. I was surprised there wasn’t any sign of developments for camping around here. I suppose the beach on the left of the photo is pretty inaccessible.

When the Georgian roads weren’t busy being beautiful or gravelly pits, they had another key feature, which is the abundance of roadside stalls selling all manner of goods. The interesting part was that different villages or regions along the side of the road seemed to specialise each in their own product. You’d have a couple of km of watermelons, then further down a stretch of pottery, followed by bread. A lot of these goods (like pottery, bread or hammocks) don’t seem to be obviously region-dependent, so I’m not quite sure what kind of economic explanation lies behind these. They were pretty popular, too. We didn’t stop at any, but it was quite common for a car in front to suddenly veer off or on to the road from one of these stalls, usually without signalling.

Most of the next photos are from the Tbilisi-Batumi highway.

Stop here for woolly hats

“There’s hammock hut, that’s on third. There’s Hammocks R Us, that’s on third too. You got Put Your Butt There. That’s on third. Swing Low, Sweet Chariot... Matter of fact, they’re all in the same complex, it’s the hammock complex on third.” “Oh, the hammock district!”

Seriously, there were a lot of hammocks for sale. Not going to lie, I kind of wanted one.

One town was full of these “5+1” bread offers (I think it’s bread, at any rate). We never stopped, because what would we do with 6 loaves of bread. Along with the 5+1s, there was the occasional 6+1, which was surely an attempt at tomfoolery

A Georgian coffee shop that is definitely not infringing on any trademarks

Here comes the bride!

Hello from Italy and from a married lady! It's official and everything went well. I might blog about it later when we get our photos (can't wait.)

Taking a break in a long day

On Sunday, we woke up with hangovers and a mission to get at least part of the way to Innsbruck, about a 7 hour drive away, where we were booked in for Monday night. But first we had to go to our venue and pack up all the decoration and presents that remained there. It took quite a while, so I can only imagine how much work it took for my husband (eek) and in-laws to set up while I was chilling in the hotel room getting my hair and makeup done. 

One hangover-busting Chinese meal later, we were ready to set off on our honeymoon. Seven hours on the road was out of the question, so we settled for a couple of hours driving and a stop in Bad Dürkheim, a cute little spa town in Germany. We selected BD basically for how far it was away, but when we ventured out to find something to eat before taking an early night, we were excited to find out that we had come on the weekend of the Wurstmarkt.

This is apparently the world's biggest wine festival and this year was celebrating its 600th edition. The focus seemed to be more on fairground fun and food than wine from what I could tell, but with our hangovers we weren't looking too hard for the wine section in any case. Jules pointed out that wurstmarkt essentially means sausage fest, which is an interesting way to start one's honeymoon! Sausages aside, it definitely seemed like a good omen for our honeymoon to stumble across a fun special event by chance.

A delicious sausage at the sausage fest

The next day, we continued on towards Innsbruck, Austria, passing over the Alps although not too much was to be seen in drizzly weather. 

Velvety Alpine grass

Castle in the Alps

I knew Innsbruck was in a pretty mountain valley, but I didn't know that it also has so many lovely buildings. Jules spent 7 years living in Innsbruck, so he was my tour guide for the afternoon, spent wandering around the city admiring the lovely architecture.

Normally you'd get a nice view of the Alps, but the moody cloud makes for a good photo too

The famous Golden Roof. We went inside the museum, but there wasn't a lot to see and you couldn't go out on to the balcony

On Tuesday, the forecast was grey and rainy both for Innsbruck and for our destination at Lake Garda, so we weren't in a particular hurry to leave the city. Instead, we toured the Hofburg Palace. Photos weren't allowed, but it was an interesting visit, with a good audioguide explaining the history of the imperial family there, especially Empress Maria Theresa. It's also known for its apartments decorated for the famous beauty Empress Sisi, wife of Franz Josef, although apparently she only stayed in them briefly.

Ceiling in the cathedral

I'm not usually super impressed by church organs, but I loved the effect on this one, almost replicating the look of a cathedral nave in its design

After eating Fleischkäse ("meat cheese" aka a sort of meatloaf - tasty) for lunch, we set off over the Alps and Dolomites for Italy. The low cloud probably hid some pretty views, but it was quite cool seeing it clinging to the sides of the mountains and rising up like steam in the valleys. First stop of our Italian roadtrip is Lake Garda, for a few days of R&R. It's definitely needed - after all the excitement of the wedding and start of the honeymoon we're pretty exhausted and fighting off a bit of a cold. But it's all worth it!

Low cloud in the Dolomites

Driving at the top of Lake Garda

Albania - the real home of slow travel

Gjirokaster-Korçë was the longest leg of our trip, and sort of summed up the experience of driving in Albania. When planning out the trip, we were surprised at how short and manageable most of the distances were, making a multi-city roadtrip feasible. However, while Google claims a driving time of 4 hours, itself not exactly brilliant for a 191 km trip, it took us nearly 5. That's an average speed of less than 40 km per hour. See how wiggly the line gets, That's the road weaving back and forth through the mountains, often on narrow, bumpy and potholed roads. If it wasn't for the nice smooth highway at the very end, it would have been even longer.

On the other hand, for most of the first half of the drive, until the road turned north again, we were driving along next to the most beautiful river valley. The river was this gorgeous, bright pastel blue. I'm not even sure pastels can be bright, by definition, but this looked like someone had got all the sticks of blue chalk in the world and crumbled them up to make a river. And then surrounded it all with jagged, imposing mountain ranges. 

Oh, and the cicadas! That's such a summer sound to me, it really reminded me of home. I don't know whether there are fewer cicadas in Europe or it's just that I spent most of my time here in cities, but it's a noise I didn't even realise I was missing until we went to Albania and encountered the world's loudest. Usually on car trips, we'll be talking and/or listening to music, but the roads in Albania demand a lot of concentration, so often the only noise in the car was the loud, insistent buzz of a million cicadas. 

Beautiful, but not quite as blue as I remember

Once we turned away from the river, the road wasn't quite as picturesque, and we were both pretty tired and sick of being in the car by the time we got to Korce. Korce hadn't been on my original itinerary, but we added it in partly because my guidebook raved about it as a cultural centre and particularly a centre for medieval religious art, and partly to break up what would have otherwise been an even longer drive across to Macedonia. 

I think it's fair to say Korce was a bit of a disappointment, or at least, both of our least favourite destination. Circumstances were partly against us - we arrived on a Monday, when the Museum of Medieval Art was closed, and we had already driven for so long that neither of us wanted to get back in the car to see some of the apparently beautiful and old churches and prehistoric sites in the surrounding villages. So we spent the afternoon having lunch, doing a quick walking tour of the city and then sitting in a café reading.

Korce cathedral and (presumably) communist statue

The interior of the cathedral was lavishly-decorated, and obviously very new - the original was destroyed by the communists

All over the city were dilapidated and ruined houses. This one must have been something special, because it was all fenced off. Looks like it must have been beautiful in its day

I was a bit uncomfortable when we headed back out at night, because, although the city centre was bustling with both men and women, there seemed to be only men sitting out at the pavement tables in all the bars and cafés. Maybe it's just me, but it just gives me a creepy, weird vibe when places are frequented exclusively by men - reminding me, funnily enough, of the first time I visited Paris and stayed in Pigalle. That feeling of the streets (or bars, in this case) being the unique preserve of groups of men is maybe one of the reasons I got a fairly bad first impression of Paris and still wouldn't put it amongst my favourite cities, despite many return visits. We did eventually find a nice and very tasty restaurant, however - food was consistently good and cheap throughout our trip.

The next day, we made sure to go to the Museum of Medieval Art nice and early. We were the only visitors - the staff (after giving us a lovely introductory talk in perfect English) even followed us around switching the lights on and off in the different sections as we made our way through. It was a good collection, with more of the Onofri icons amongst many others, but unless you have a particular love for icons and Byzantine art, Korçë can probably be skipped off the itinerary.

Photos weren't allowed inside the museum, but I snapped this hungry horse out in the lobby

Ksamillionaires

Okay, take two. I lost the first draft of this thanks to the dodgy blogger app and dodgy wifi connection sigh. 

So, we left Drymades on Friday and headed back down the coast to the south-western tip of Albania at a place called Ksamil, for a little culture and some more beach time. Ksamil was beautiful enough, its bay dotted with small islands and the considerably bigger island of Corfu close enough on the horizon to see individual houses on its shores. However, it proved not to be our favourite of the beaches we visited on the Albanian riviera. 

Our hearts sank a bit when we first glimpsed the beach - it was packed with sunloungers, full of noisy children, and seemed to consist of a thin layer of sand over a strip of concrete jutting out towards the water. After the beautiful beaches of Himare and Drymsdes, it was a bit of a letdown. However, we walked a bit further around the coast away from the town centre and managed to find some private beaches that were a lot less crowded and artificial. 

The main problem with beaches - and many other places - in Albania is that they seem to think relaxing on the beach is best done with a background of pumping dance music. This is not a sentiment I share. Every little individual beach in Ksamil (separated by man-made rock formations) played its own horrible Wagnerian-length dance compositions over tinny loudspeakers. We even went past a fricking children's playground at around 10 pm which was still blasting out the tunes. Drymades beach did have music as well, but where we were it was quieter and it was 90s music, which at least is "my era". And yes, that does make me sound like a grumpy old person complaining about that racket the young people are in to these days. I refuse to believe anyone can enjoy dance music without copious amounts of drink or drugs though. Ugh, I sound like my Dad complaining about me playing Radiohead in the house ;)

En route to Ksamil - maybe Borsch beach (mmm, Borsch)

Ksamil selfie

Ksamil beach with Corfu in the background

View from the private beach we were on

We ended up leaving Ksamil a day earlier than planned and heading to Gjirokastra. We have been booking hotels a day at a time, leaving us the flexibility to move from Himare to Drymades and cut our Ksamil leg short. It's worked out pretty well. First though, we visited the ancient city of Butrint, next time on Gwan's Albanian Adventures...

Beach bums

On Tuesday, we set out from Berat for the drive to Himare. This involved crossing over the Llogara Pass, a pass over 1000 metres high in the Ceraunian Mountains. Apparently Julius Caesar landed nearby and chased Pompey through the mountains here at a neighbouring pass that still bears his name. It's twisty and turney, but speaking for my non-driving self, less harrowing than the road to Berat, as the road itself is pretty well-maintained. 

Navigating obstacles in rural Albania

View from atop the Pass

Mount Çika, I think

Looking back up at the road we came down from Drymades

In Himarë, our hotel was on the main road, just a hop skip and a jump away from the hotel's private beach. I don't entirely agree with the concept of having private beaches everywhere and having to pay to use loungers and umbrellas, but it's undeniably quite nice to have these facilities once you're there - some places, waiters will even bring drinks right to your deckchair, although the concept of cocktails doesn't seem to have saturated the Albanian market yet, unfortunately. People often wander past selling things too, most commonly popcorn, which seems a very odd choice of beach food. 

View from our hotel in Himare

We bummed about in Himare for a day and a half, and then drove back up the way we came to Drymades, and bummed around there. Himare is a nice little town, smaller than it looks in the way in, and pretty uncrowded, with a good selection of restaurants, bars and small shops. Drymades is even more picturesque and tranquil, but with relatively little in the way of shops and resturants. We ran out of money and had to wait until we drove back through Himare because there are no ATMs in Drymades or nearby Dhermi. Both are really nice, it depends whether or not you want things slightly livelier in Himare or more peaceful (we were also not right on the beach or road in Drymades).  

I have so many gorgeous photos from the three days, hard to pick! We had a great time swimming, sunbathing and eating fresh fish. 

Himare

Himare

This was the view at sunset from our waterfront restaurant where, due to a misunderstanding, we ended up with an entree and three mains between the two of us, including a plate of squid and two whole sea bass. With drinks as well and a tip, the bill came to about 23.50€ - unbelievable. 

We found some cocktails!

One of the best things about Drymades beach was the crystal clear water. I was hypnotised watching the small waves crash and recede over the pebbles like a pulse. The bad part was that it was soooo difficult to get in and out of the sea. The pebbles were fairly sharp and your feet tended to sink into them, and I kept getting knocked off balance by the waves. At points, I literally had to crawl up the beach to try and escape. Not good 

Drymades beach

The amazing clear water and treacherous rocks 

I could post a billion more photos, it's so pretty, but I'm not sure decrepit Albanian wifi can even cope with this many, so I'll leave it there.