Seat of Our Pants

Batumi is being pimped out as the next “it” place on the Black Sea coast. Construction workers are furiously working to revamp this coastal town. It looks to us like they’re trying to turn the town into a Nice of the East. While I understand their desire to bring in more tourists, I can’t help but think that they’ve missed the point. Batumi, as it stands today, is a wonderfully romantic old town. It took us all of ten minutes here to fall in love.

The smell of seawater hangs heavy in the air. Tank-top clad women, so different from the their Turkish neighbors, stroll proudly down the boardwalk. Sidewalks are lined with trellises covered in twisted grape vines. Ancient men sit together on the street corners playing backgammon. It’s the kind of place we’ve been searching for; a place where you unpack your backpack, buy bottles of wine and fill your day with deliciously decadent activities. So, to celebrate Batumi’s aged romantic vibe (and in the name of all things anti-backpacker), we spent yesterday in the pursuit of decadence.

The day started with breakfast in our room of left-over cheese pie and orange juice. It’s not necessarily a decadent start to the day, unless you know that they came out of our in-room mini-fridge. That’s right. We have a fridge in our room. Total decadence.

The morning’s activity was a short ride south of town: a still intact Roman fortress. The ruins were close enough that we only had to spend just two hours round-trip to see them, thus leaving our afternoon free. For anyone who plans to drink wine for most of the day, sightseeing in the morning is a must.

Lunch was, surprise-surprise, more cheese pie (it seems to be all they eat here), washed down with a local brew. OK, actually it was two big mugs of beer each. But who’s counting?

We were scheduled to play tennis in the late afternoon, so we whiled away the hottest hours of the day (and the lunch buzz) relaxing in our room. Once the sun had passed sunburn time, we headed to the tennis courts dressed in our Wimbledon best. Neither of us have actually played tennis in our adulthood. Needless to say, we were amazing. An hour spent accidentally whacking the ball over the boundary fences – decadent(ly embarrassing)!

Our tennis cool-down session was spent at a restaurant overlooking the sea. A bottle of delicious Georgian red wine later, we were eating more cheese pie and watching the sun set over the Black Sea coast.

It doesn’t happen very often, but every once in a while we have the perfect (anti-backpacker) day.

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