Life is easy in Tbilisi - we have already rechristened the city The Big Easy of the East. It’s hard to believe we’ve been here a couple of weeks already and have quite happily fallen into a new routine. Go out to lunch every couple of days to one of our favourite haunts - between A$4-A$8... go out for Thai dinner once or twice a week - two mains, rice, beers... maybe A$20/€13... potter about the ‘hood hunting for groceries amongst various suppliers... the local Carrefour for steak and drinkies in bottles, the local Goodwill supermarket (we know... strange name) - for wine as they usually have half a dozen wineries doing tastings. We usually try 2-3 wines then buy a bottle or two to trundle home with - rather like free Tequila when we were buying silver in Mexico - plying the punter with booze does work in our case. Our local fruit & vege shop is just near our pet Baker - so much easier and more fun than lugging it home from the supermarket - and who knew you could buy a couple of kilos of fresh raspberries for about A$6. Aside from my miserable childhood memories of picking raspberries for a pittance in summer - I have never seen that many raspberries in one place. And fresh figs! Just heaven.

When not out hunting and gathering, we’ve been enjoying long walks in the cool of the evening down and through Tbilisi’s old town and back along the river that runs through the city. Finally, after a long and quite hot summer, the cool of Autumn is descending bit by bit - daily highs are still in the upper 20s... but overnight is down to 16 or so. We’ve been busy in several regards actually - not all involving gadding about Tbilisi and enjoying life in general. In fact we’ve been flat out planning a little adventure to have after our 10 weeks housesitting in the Mekong-boonies of Vietnam.

That’s right. In the midst of gadding about in Tbilisi, several afternoons have been devoted to our post-Vietnam adventure of gadding about South East Asia. So much has been planned we’re actually surprised the bank, American Express and PayPal haven’t gotten in touch to say the credit cards have been filched and are now, apparently, roaming about Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Myanmar having a grand old time. Sadly not... just us planning our socks off. Plans for the forthcoming week (now that Asia has been well and truly dealt with)? Well! Off for a day-trip to the Georgian mountains tomorrow - at least 10 degrees cooler than the city - have even packed a jumper! Bring on winter indeed.