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Celebrating New Year's Eve


Happy New Year! Our holidays are just finished, so I’ll tell you about our experiences celebrating New Year. Only Charlotte, Oubayda and I stayed in Georgia for the holidays, so we decided to make a road trip together. It was really fun and nice to get to know the country better! To celebrate New Years, we decided to go to Batumi. Renée was already back from home, so she also joined. On the way, we stopped a few times: first to look at an incredible view we had over a foggy valley and to pet some cute puppies along the way, then to make a visit to the Katskhi Column, a little church on top of a beautiful rock pillar, and finally to visit Kutaisi. We were really hungry, so we sat down in the first pizza restaurant we found. That turned out to be a bad choice. The restaurant was really small, and the only waiter working there was not really listening to our orders, since he was busy dancing non-stop to the loud music. It was hard to make any contact with him. After some time we saw him rolling a joint behind the counter though, so that might explain his behaviour. In the end the food was not that good and he had even forgotten Charlotte’s order… Wouldn’t recommend this place, but we had fun.


Katskhi Column

The puppies!






After our interesting lunch experience and walking around in Kutaisi for a bit, we had to continue the road to Batumi in order to meet our apartment host on time. The drive was quite smooth, until we entered Batumi. The car gave the signal of having not enough air in the tires, so we stopped to take a look. Everything seemed okay, so we drove on, but the minute we hit the road again, one tire exploded. It was completely flat immediately. Luckily, we had an extra tire in the back of the car, but unluckily, we did not have the right wrench to change it. In the end we calledl the man from whom we rented the car and he called a taxi for us who would help us. This taxi driver did not seem to have much experience with changing a tire, but in the end it was done and we could finally drive on to the apartment. 


Centre of Kutaisi

A flat tire!



That night, Krista also arrived from Latvia. The next day we could all discover Batumi together. Renée, Krista and I had already been there in summer, which turned out to be a much better time to explore this city, since now it was the rainy season and we walked in pouring rain for the whole day. In the afternoon, Renée’s friend from the Netherlands also arrived, so we went for a nice New Year’s Eve dinner all together. Afterwards, everyone gathered on the Europe Square, where we counted down to 2025. Luckily the rain had stopped, so with some glintwine and a lot of fireworks, we happily went into the new year! We got some more wine and made it a nice evening.


Happy New Year!

Batumi in winter: palmtrees with Christmas lights


The first of January was a resting day. We only walked a bit along the beach and got some new year’s cake from our sweet host. Renée and her friend already left early in the morning, since they wanted to go to Armenia.
The second of January is an official holiday in Georgia. The way you spend this day is supposed to determine how you will spend the rest of the year. Therefore, we travelled home that day, so that we will spend the rest of the year travelling. First, we drove to a nice waterfall and after to the Prometheus Caves, since we really wanted to visit those. Unfortunately we had not realised that since it was an official holiday, all public places like that were closed, so we could not enter the caves. We searched for what else we could visit instead, and found that there was a cave tunnel that we could visit ourselves. Unfortunately, Google Maps did not show where the entrance should be and the roads towards the cave were too much off road for our car, but we decided to try to walk there. I think we walked for almost half an hour in the middle of nowhere until we gave up and went back before we would not be able to find the way back anymore. Our next try was an abandoned palace near Kutaisi. Since it was abandoned, we thought it could not be closed. But no, when we came there, we saw that some of the rooms were used as living space by some people, and a Russian woman came to us and asked for entrance money if we wanted to see the building. We did not want to pay and since we were already quite tired and exhausted from all our failing plans, we decided we rather just wanted to drive home. 


Batumi beach

At the waterfall


So, if we had to translate this day into a prediction for the rest of the year, we could say that we will face a lot of closed doors, that our plans won’t work out and that we will be tired. But let’s say that next year, despite some disappointments we will keep on trying, we will at least be travelling and making new experiences and most importantly: we will be with friends, making the best out of it together!


Now this whole New Year's story might sound a bit failed, but we had a lot of fun together, and that’s what counts!







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