Good-Bye Azerbaijan, Hello Georgia

The Bridge of Peace astride the Kura River

Good-bye Azerbaijan.  Good-bye Baku.

Hello Georgia.  Hello Tbilisi.

Let's start with those two contrasting photos to make a point about Baku versus Tbilisi. Baku is a Cat Town.  No doubt about it.  Stray cats everywhere and hardly a dog in sight.  I've been in Tbilisi for a few hours and I've already seen an exponential increase in the number of street dogs and a noticeable uptick in walked dogs.  Tbilisi is a Dog Town. 

Tbilisi also is a Tourist Town.  Far far more so than Baku.  I did not know this before, but Tbilisi definitely has been "discovered."  It is on the Tourist Map.  Baku is a hidden gem.  It still has a light tourist footprint.

My hotel is the Qarvasla.  Old building.  Renovated into modern sleekness.

Yes.  That is the hallway outside my room.  It's a nice wide boulevard, but it screams modernity.

The room is nice.

But it's not The Merchant of Baku.  At least it's not too ultra-modern.

It overlooks a collection of tourist shops.

You walk out the front door of the hotel and the street doesn't look too busy.

Not a parking space in sight, but not "tourist horde" busy.

But if you make a right turn, coming out of the hotel, you hit tourist horde-dom.

Over-priced restaurants with English language menus.  Georgian cuisine at U.S. prices (and hopefully not U.S. levels of flavor).

And while there is a downside to being in the middle of the tourist horde in the tourist part of town, the Old City, there is an upside.  I am with a very short walk of interesting sights well worth seeing.  Even if I do have to squeeze my way through the tourist horde to get there.

For example:  That is the Zion Cathedral of the Dormition of Tbilisi, just a throw o' the stone from the Qarvasla Hotel.  Shall we go inside?

Let's.

Orthodox cathedrals tend to be (a) ornate and (b) dark.  This one checked both boxes.

And, of course, no flash photography.

They don't even allow bare legs -- for either sex! -- so of course they are not going to allow flash photography.

I then left the cathedral.  Unbeknownst to me, I was near the Kura River that cuts through Tbilisi like the proverbial hot knife and cold butter.  Unbeknownst to me I was very close to one of Tbilisi's signature sights:  the Bridge of Peace.

That's the bridge.  The building visible just to the right is the State Palace of Ceremonies which looks down upon the Bridge of Peace.  I don't mean "looks down upon" in the sense that it feels superior in some sort of conceited way.  I mean it is at a higher elevation so that if you are on the property of State Palace of Ceremonies and you glance toward the Bridge of Peace, you would, in fact, be looking downward.

And here's an Orthodox Cathedral artsily juxtaposed with a cable car.

Tbilisi is a city doubly-blessed when comes to elevation-friendly transportation.  It has an impressive funicular.  I saw that on the cab ride into town from the airport:  steep and long, just like a funicular should be.  And Tbilisi has a cable car system.  Here's a cable car posed in front of what I believe to be, from my distance, the fortress-like Metekhi Church of the Nativity of the Mother of God.

Here is the Metekhi Church sans cable car.

Sans cable car, yes, but with the Metekhi Bridge.

And this is another signature sight of Tbilisi.

 

The huge, aluminum Mother of Georgia statue.  Built in 1958 to honor the 1500th anniversary since the founding of Tbilisi.  Fifteen hundred.  Would that make a sesqui-millennial celebration?  Anyway, this was shot with the zoom function.  I do intend to get closer to Mother before the trip is over.

In the meantime, it's time to get closer to the Bridge of Peace.

It is a pedestrian bridge.  It would appear from my stroll across it that pedestrians do not use it to cross to the other side of the Kura.  They use it to take pictures, often selfies.

The views of the Kura are nice.  This is looking south:

You know it's south since you can see the Metekhi Church of the Nativity of the Mother of God just to the left of Metekhi Bridge.

This is looking north:

The building visible on the east bank of the Kura River is the mega-controversial Rike Concert Hall.  It is controversial largely but not completely because it is butt ugly.  The butt-ugliness is reason enough, but if I remember correctly, there also was controversy about the funding.  But don't quote me on that.  Please.  You may quote me on everything else in here.  Just not that.

Back to the Bridge.

That's what the bridge looks like from on the bridge.  In case.

It is distinctive, I will give you that.

We will end the first day walking tour of Tbilisi with this:

And I don't know that the Hades that is.  Nor do I want to know.  But I do want to know Tbilisi better and that should happen tomorrow when I do a free walking tour of this Tourist Town.  For those keeping score -- and I know I am -- Georgia (The Country, not Georgia The State) goes into the books as my 45th country visited.