Falling into our normal routine, we grabbed a quick breakfast and D&D and awaited our 9am pick up at the hotel for our Envoy tour. Today's tour was more cultural in nature, visiting a few nearby churches followed by a drive to Gori and a visit to the cave city of Uplistsikhe. We were happy when the bus pulled up and we saw that Nika was our guide again! Today the number of folks on the tour was in between our last 2 experiences – there were about 13. Many of the folks we already knew – something that happens often when visiting places like this is you run into the same tourists over and over. Our buddies Venkat and Cristina were there, along with the 3 older Dutch couples from the Kazbegi experience. Other members included an older gentleman from Switzerland (who Venkat met the day before) and a couple of young guys from Egypt, and a young woman originally from Kyiv now living in NYC.

Our first stop was Jvari Church, located only about 15 minutes away. We learned Jvari is considered one of the holiest churches in Georgia. The day was clear and crisp, so from the church we were able to take in stunning views overlooking the town of Mtskheta below – the spot where the Mtkvari and Aragvi rivers join. The church is clearly very popular as evidenced by the throngs of tourists. We went into the church where Nika explained about St. Nino and the legend of the pillar. The atmosphere was divine and holy, only partially obstructed by the many tourists.

Back outside we walked around the church looking for that "unique" perspective for great photo shots. We soon boarded the bus again for the short drive down to Mtskheta to visit the grand Svetitskhoveli Cathedral, which is the principal church of Georgia and completed in 1029. Svetitskhoveli means “cathedral of the living pillar” and is huge by comparison to the other churches, with a soaring interior including wonderful iconography, sarcophagi and imagery. Svetitskhoveli is recognized by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site and is considered a masterpiece of the Early Middle Ages. It is the second largest church in Georgia, after the much more modern Tsminda Sameba Cathedral in Tbilisi that we could easily see from our hotel window.

The church is known as the burial site of Christ’s robe, and the church has long been one of the principal Georgian Orthodox churches and is among the most venerated places of worship in the country. As with most important churches, there is some amazing history associated with this one. According to Georgian legend, a Georgian Jew from Mtskheta named Elias was in Jerusalem when Jesus was crucified. He bought Jesus’ robe and brought it back to Georgia. Upon his return to Mtskheta, he was met by his sister Sidonia who upon touching the robe immediately died from the emotions engendered by the holy object. The robe could not be removed from her grasp, so she was buried with it. The place where Sidonia is buried, with Christ’s robe, is preserved in the Cathedral.

Later, from her grave grew an enormous cedar tree. St. Nino (who brought Christianity to Georgia) ordered the cedar chopped down to build a church. From the cedar tree she had seven columns made for the church foundations. The seventh column, however, had magical properties and rose by itself into the air. After St. Nino prayed the whole night it returned to earth. The image of this pillar floating in the air is seen both here and at Jvari.

Ok, after the spirituality of the morning we boarded the bus for a completely different flavor. We drove about 90 minutes to the city of Gori. On the way we came within like 200 m of the South Ossetia breakaway region’s border with Georgia. We weren’t allowed to enter, but several folks got texts on their phones welcoming them to Russia.

Upon arriving in Gori, overall there didn’t appear to be much there (we did see a fortress up on the hill) and we learned the city was occupied by the Russians during the 2008 war. The reason for coming here is to visit the museum dedicated to probably the most infamous Georgian of all – Joseph Stalin.

The museum guide walked us through the museum which did a nice job depicting Stalin’s birth (he had a long Georgian name that was shortened to Stalin) his youth and interest in revolution as a youngster, and ultimately his rise to power. The atrocities to the Georgian people as well as to people across the former Soviet Union was demonstrated in a separate room and was sobering indeed. Of interest was a display showing what countries around the world gave Stalin for his 70th birthday. US gave nothing. UK gave something very cheap. Former Eastern Bloc countries and China gave quite elaborate gifts. The most hilarious was the gift from Mexico – an ink pot in the shape of a man with a guitar and sombrero taking a siesta next to a cactus. Talk about stereotypes!

Outside the main museum is the house where Stalin was born. The one room shack was tiny indeed. We enjoyed talking pictures of the interior and then when asked by others to show them the picture, we instead showed them a picture of the interior of our room at the Marriott J. More interesting was a car from Stalin’s green train. We walked through several cars showing bedrooms, a kitchen, dining and meeting rooms. Most fascinating was the bathroom. The toilet in particular was awesome as the flush mechanism was not on the top, but down at the bottom allowing one to flush with the foot – instead of touching the germy handle. There must have been a germ-o-phobe in Stalin’s design team (or maybe he had an early concern about the possibility of antibiotic resistance?)

After the sobering museum experience we had a quick ride to the Envoy traditional lunch. Lunch was good with many of the same foods we had eaten at the previous meals. Maybe with time our taste buds were becoming more refined or we were just getting picky, but we found the previous 2 meals a bit more satisfying. The fact that Efren kept finding little spiders crawling over him didn’t help. Nika led the group as the traditional toastmaster and this time we were lucky enough to get Venkat to start singing some traditional Indian songs. Very beautiful. It was so captivating, in fact, that the bus driver upon hearing Venkat sing came running into the room with his iphone wanting to capture a video!

To digest lunch appropriately, there has to be some physical activity involved, right? Of course – so the final stop for the day was a trip to the nearby ancient cave city of Uplistsikhe. This once prominent city was originally inhabited by a pagan society. We had to climb up a bit to see the site and once at the top had great views of the surrounding area, which Nika said “looked like Texas”. Honestly after the majesty of Davit Gareja the day prior Uplistsikhe was a bit underwhelming. Still, we enjoyed working off the calories from lunch walking around the site.

We were then on our way back to Tbilisi. Around 2 hours later we arrived. We picked up our laundry at the Envoy, bid farewell to our new friends, and exchanged contact information so we could keep in touch and share the gazillions of pictures we had taken. We all agreed we’d love to meet up in Georgia again in the future. This was our last day in Georgia, so we decided to head to our favorite restaurant for dinner – g.vino. We went all out and ordered a lovely salad, croquettes, amazing khachapuri with spinach and a scrumptious veal stew. All washed down with lots of wine.

We then returned to the hotel and started packing as tomorrow AM we leave Georgia for our next destination – Armenia. Over yet another glass of wine we reflected further about this amazing country. Georgia really has had an impact on us. We say this about most places we travel – we love the sites, food, people, history, etc – but something about Georgia is all that and more. The essence of the place, the spirit of the people, the freshness of the “vibe”, lure of the wine, the draw of the sites, and timelessness of the history all combine together to create a truly captivating destination. Without a doubt, we want to return to this special place. It may sound trite, but we definitely left a part of our hearts in Georgia.