Somusing

Dad (Jon) and I are roughly three weeks into a month-long trip around Eastern Europe and the Caucasus region. We started in Armenia, made our way through Georgia, across the Black Sea to Ukraine, through Moldova and now to Kyiv, Ukraine. We have one more stop, Lviv, and then it’s back home to Idaho. I’ll cover our first two weeks(ish) in this post, from the start to the Black Sea ferry. This trip may sound familiar, as many of our destinations match up with a trip Dad and Phin took in August 2013. They wrote about their trip in several posts: Let sleeping dogs lie in Kiev Kiev Pechersk Lavra More Kiev churches and sights Ukrainian miscellany Tbilisi, Georgia Enlinking the Caucasus from Tbilisi to Yerevan Yerevan, Armenia sights Burning rubber in Yerevan, Armenia Garni & Geghard, Armenia Ejmiatsin, Armenia Dad and I have been interested in Eastern Europe for a long time, so this trip has been a great opportunity to see a lot of new places in the east. A lot of plac...

Phin and I visited Tbilisi, Georgia twice, for less than 3 days total. After getting away from the highly predatory taxi drivers at the airport we found the bus to take us into the city to Freedom Square: Then we walked through a mixture of completely decaying and fancily renovated neighborhoods to Envoy Hostel which was on Betlemi Street nestled between the Narikala Fortress and the Kura (Mtkvari) River by the Metekhi Bridge in the heart of the old town. Google Maps has some of the names in Roman script. Once we got settled in and put our things away, we walked up to the Narikala Fortress and immediately fell in love with the whole area. Here was a view that looked like the entrance to the garden of Eden: The fortress ruins contain the newly restored St. Nicholas church: We had nice evening views out over the river and the city. Here facing north, in the middle you can see the mushroom-shaped building that is the new ministry of justice, the new Bridge of Peace, and ...