After Chris and I had triumphantly humped it back down the mountain and into Gori proper, we were faced with the fact that it was not yet quite 5:00, and Gori offers limited options in terms of evening entertainment, beyond the Georgian usual involving eating and drinking. We decided to take advantage of the daylight, tell our sore and tired limbs to fuck off, and walk up to Gori's ruined ancient fortress. To get there, we walked through the town proper, which is undergoing some serious renovation that I can only assume is the lingering aftermath of the devastation caused by the 2008 war.
It is worth noting that the Town Center does not look like this! Most of Gori is very pretty. It is about the same size as Poti, I would guess, but offers much more in terms of tourist attractions and history. Their main street, Stalin Avenue (natch), definitely does not lack in the "restaurants and bars" department. Which we made good use of later in the evening! But back to the timeline.
It's really easy to find the Gori Fortress. Just look up, and then find a street going vaguely toward it. That's pretty much what we did, and after trekking through the apocalypse above, we soon found the path to take us up.
Gori Fortress is actually kind of like Narikala Fortress in Tbilisi. It's huge, ancient, awe-inspiring, and utterly without any provided context or history. I am a tremendous nerd, so I will happily always take all the ruins I can get, but if you are less inclined I would say that this might be the one thing you could skip in Gori. Certainly if you have to choose between Gori Jvari and the Fortress, choose Gori Jvari! That being said, I thought the fortress was pretty awesome. And it seriously is right in town so unless the last marshutka is leaving in the next 15 minutes, there's no excuse not to pay a quick visit.
We stumped around for a while, but the fact remained that on our break between our hike and the fortress, I had had a beer, and my bladder has the capacity of a midget's thimble. So we had to go -- to find a very necessary toilet and also to find food, as lunch had been a very, very long time ago.
We selected the Sport Cafe for our dinner spot. Possibly not the most ostensibly authentic place we could find, but we liked the outdoor tables, our Gori brochure recommended it, and it was right on the main drag, the one and only Stalin Avenue. And the food was great.
We ordered pork and chicken mtsvadi, roasted new potatoes, mushrooms with sulguni cheese, and shoti. More food than two girls could ever eat, but it was completely delicious. Plus we got to share our uneaten meat with the cute stray dogs who were hanging around.
After dinner, we decided to hit up a night spot also recommended by our brochure -- Shardin Cafe, again -- on Stalin Avenue. There's a pattern here. The bar was quite cool and played good music. We ordered a bottle of Georgian sparkling wine, and the waitress was very patient while I tried to remember the Georgian word for "cold", because warm champagne is gross.
We had a potential Georgian Problem while sitting here, playing with my camera... a very drunk Georgian man swayed over to our table and threatened to knock over our champagne with his belly. While we made polite, "please go away, I don't speak your language" noises, our waitress charged over like an angry mother wolf defending her cubs. She and old drunk Georgian dude had a full-on Georgian Argument in front of our table, but before long, drunk Georgian dude slunk back to his own den with his tail between his legs. We love you, Georgian mama-wolf!!
The bar closed at midnight, which was just as well, because we were planning to get up early the next day and go to the ancient cave city of Uplistsikhe.
There are marshutkas to the village next to Uplistsikhe, but I didn't feel like dealing with all that, so we hired a cab. I am getting good at bargaining, despite not knowing how to say numbers higher than 13. So after a few moments of jovial back-and-forth (and charades, there are always charades), I got the cab for 30 lari which included ~2 hours of waiting time at the site so he could take us back afterwards.
We got to the site around 9:45, and honestly I don't think they were even officially open yet, because we had to wait for a guard to go find some random guy to sell us our tickets. Getting there early turned out to be a fantastic idea, because for the first 45 minutes or so, we had this gigantic, magnificent playground all to ourselves.
I. LOVED. It. Here. The entire place is just open... you are free to climb and crawl and jump and scramble to your heart's content, and we did a lot of that. It was so incredibly fascinating to duck in and out of these rooms and halls, and imagine what it might have looked like a thousand years ago.
Those ladder-like notches in the photo above are apparently what Uplistsikhe-ians used for stairs. At first, Chris and I were being very hesitant and careful in our exploring, but soon the place got under both our skins and we started climbing around like crazy. It is possible that we made some less-than-totally-safe choices here, but I had a ball and no one sprained an ankle or broke an arm. Great success!
Right after this picture was taken, I ran out of handholds and almost had a cat-in-a-tree moment, afraid I wasn't going to be able to go up OR down. I'm not sure what kind of rock this was, maybe some kind of sandstone because my boots had really good traction. :) Lucky thing as I just pushed myself to not think too hard about how steep it was and scrambled up the rest of the way. Great success!
Uplistsikhe was just so goddam cool. Two hours was not enough!
When we finally had to leave, our very nice taxi driver was waiting as promised. Back in Gori, it was early enough that we could still see one of Gori's two museums that we hadn't hit yet, but our workout in Uplistsikhe had worn us out! We got lunch in a cool little coffeehouse and headed for the marshutka station. Got a bus without a hitch and headed back to Tbilisi.
Amazing trip, and a fitting Last Hurrah for Chris's final weekend in Georgia. So don't let anyone tell you Gori isn't worth seeing!
It is worth noting that the Town Center does not look like this! Most of Gori is very pretty. It is about the same size as Poti, I would guess, but offers much more in terms of tourist attractions and history. Their main street, Stalin Avenue (natch), definitely does not lack in the "restaurants and bars" department. Which we made good use of later in the evening! But back to the timeline.
It's really easy to find the Gori Fortress. Just look up, and then find a street going vaguely toward it. That's pretty much what we did, and after trekking through the apocalypse above, we soon found the path to take us up.
Gori Fortress is actually kind of like Narikala Fortress in Tbilisi. It's huge, ancient, awe-inspiring, and utterly without any provided context or history. I am a tremendous nerd, so I will happily always take all the ruins I can get, but if you are less inclined I would say that this might be the one thing you could skip in Gori. Certainly if you have to choose between Gori Jvari and the Fortress, choose Gori Jvari! That being said, I thought the fortress was pretty awesome. And it seriously is right in town so unless the last marshutka is leaving in the next 15 minutes, there's no excuse not to pay a quick visit.
We stumped around for a while, but the fact remained that on our break between our hike and the fortress, I had had a beer, and my bladder has the capacity of a midget's thimble. So we had to go -- to find a very necessary toilet and also to find food, as lunch had been a very, very long time ago.
We selected the Sport Cafe for our dinner spot. Possibly not the most ostensibly authentic place we could find, but we liked the outdoor tables, our Gori brochure recommended it, and it was right on the main drag, the one and only Stalin Avenue. And the food was great.
We ordered pork and chicken mtsvadi, roasted new potatoes, mushrooms with sulguni cheese, and shoti. More food than two girls could ever eat, but it was completely delicious. Plus we got to share our uneaten meat with the cute stray dogs who were hanging around.
After dinner, we decided to hit up a night spot also recommended by our brochure -- Shardin Cafe, again -- on Stalin Avenue. There's a pattern here. The bar was quite cool and played good music. We ordered a bottle of Georgian sparkling wine, and the waitress was very patient while I tried to remember the Georgian word for "cold", because warm champagne is gross.
 |
| Awesome mod shot that Chris took with my camera. :) |
 |
| Mod shot of Chris. |
The bar closed at midnight, which was just as well, because we were planning to get up early the next day and go to the ancient cave city of Uplistsikhe.
There are marshutkas to the village next to Uplistsikhe, but I didn't feel like dealing with all that, so we hired a cab. I am getting good at bargaining, despite not knowing how to say numbers higher than 13. So after a few moments of jovial back-and-forth (and charades, there are always charades), I got the cab for 30 lari which included ~2 hours of waiting time at the site so he could take us back afterwards.
We got to the site around 9:45, and honestly I don't think they were even officially open yet, because we had to wait for a guard to go find some random guy to sell us our tickets. Getting there early turned out to be a fantastic idea, because for the first 45 minutes or so, we had this gigantic, magnificent playground all to ourselves.
 |
| Entrance from the riverbank up to the cave city |
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| Our first view of Uplistsikhe |
Those ladder-like notches in the photo above are apparently what Uplistsikhe-ians used for stairs. At first, Chris and I were being very hesitant and careful in our exploring, but soon the place got under both our skins and we started climbing around like crazy. It is possible that we made some less-than-totally-safe choices here, but I had a ball and no one sprained an ankle or broke an arm. Great success!
 |
| Amazing shot Chris took of me playing at rock-climbing! |
Uplistsikhe was just so goddam cool. Two hours was not enough!
 |
| Chris getting her shot. |
When we finally had to leave, our very nice taxi driver was waiting as promised. Back in Gori, it was early enough that we could still see one of Gori's two museums that we hadn't hit yet, but our workout in Uplistsikhe had worn us out! We got lunch in a cool little coffeehouse and headed for the marshutka station. Got a bus without a hitch and headed back to Tbilisi.
Amazing trip, and a fitting Last Hurrah for Chris's final weekend in Georgia. So don't let anyone tell you Gori isn't worth seeing!
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