Nakvahmdis Tbilisi! (That would be farewell.) The time has sadly come to say goodbye to our little kitten, who is no longer little and already growing up. So grown up in fact that last week we experienced, for the first time, what a cat on heat is really like. Not an experience we want to repeat ever, ever again. We even resorted to Google for help (not so much of the ‘even’ really - we’re always googling something). Not surprisingly the question “how do I calm a cat on heat?” has been asked thousands of times. Play with her? yeah done that. Rub her back/tummy? yeah, done that and that. Give her a warm hot water bottle to lay on? Tried it. She couldn’t sit still long enough to enjoy it. What it boils down to after a bit of speed reading was: 1) Get her spayed - not right now. 2) Get a hotel and 3) if you don’t do either 1) or 2), then just wait till your ears stop bleeding. Right then. So a week later, after earplugs, sleeping pills and truckloads of patience it finally finished. Just in time for her owners to come home. They’d better be quick about the spaying business as it will be psycho-kitten 2.0 underway again in 2-3 weeks otherwise.

So aside from learning the meaning of caterwauling first hand, we’ve not been up to anything too energetic. We’ve been doing our fair share of gallivanting whilst the price tags permit and have enjoyed a couple of outings to our French restaurant. We also found, quite late in the piece, that the four star hotel around the corner had an exceedingly well priced restaurant. We’d enjoyed their $5 lunch special a couple of times and ended up there for dinner 3 or 4 times in the end. Absolutely perfect on the last night before departure when the kitchen was spotless and we didn’t want to touch a thing. Their speciality? Italian! Was it special? You betcha! The hand made ravioli with calf meat was to die for as was the pizza. It’s a funny old thing in Georgia. Doesn’t seem to matter if you go top end or bottom end - prices really seem to hover in the same vicinity. So might as well enjoy top end while we can.

Dining out aside, life has been relatively peaceful. The usual drama of packing day - which ends up being packing week. Day 1 - look at belongings. Look at bags. Heave massive sigh. Watch Netflix. Day 2 - Pack the little stuff - We are huge fans of packing cubes so pack the medical cube, undies cube, toiletries cube etc. Feel productive. Stop. Watch Netflix. Day 3 - Bite the bullet and try to find all the clothes in the house and sit them in a pile. Feel bad. Sort clothes into Not Wearing in Foreseeable Future / Might wear on Plane / Everything else. Get out compression bags and start packing clothes. Pile shrinks. Pack as much as humanly possible into my bag. Go looking for other bags (like say James’s) to stash other stuff. Feel super productive and 95% packed. Watch Netflix. Day 4 - Realise have 20% of packing left to do - for instance our travel towels. Not usually a problem as they’re packed early, assuming they even came out of the bag. More of a problem here as owners are minimalist and left no towels. Sigh. Watch Netlfix. Day 5 (day before departure to Yerevan, Armenia - leave iPad uncharged (therefore no Netflix available). Actually finish packing. YAAAYYYY!!! See. Lucky we’re travelling full time and can actually focus best part of a week on wrangling lives back into luggage every couple of months. Mind you - only going to Yerevan for 4 days - then a final night near the airport in Tbilisi - then have to actually weigh everything with a keen eye for detail before flying to Ireland. Shouldn’t be much packing.

PS - How do you know you may have just a tad too much luggage? When the driver and car arrives to take you to your next destination and he looks at the luggage pile and says - ‘Where are the rest of the people?” Lucky he was a good driver...

PPS - Ara pictured inhaling the steam from James’s dinner of Georgian dumplings - Keep Calm & Eat Khinkalis.