Gambles and shambles

Once back in Tbilisi we wasted little time before taking the train at 22:30 to Batumi, the city of tourists and gambling. The beds on the night train were too short, even for me, and the heat, noise and light were very uncomfortable. However the night on the train was definitely the best night's sleep I had on the entire trip.

On arrival at Batumi station we were surrounded by the usual crowd of dodgy taxi drivers wanting us to pick them. We went by mashutka, instead, because it was cheaper. However, for the first time the mashutka let us down: the driver took us to the wrong address but by the time we had worked out what was wrong he was gone. The mistake was honest enough, he took us to Kldiashvili Avenue instead of Kldiashvili Street, but it confused us a great deal.

The hostel itself was very strange. Outside there was a training ship and indoors the walls were decorated with old sailor uniforms and paintings of ships. The rest of Batumi proved to be just as bizarre. Everywhere you looked there were building sites, swanky hotels and casinos. The beach stretched a whopping 8 kilometers and had a walkway along the whole length of it. All this was in stark contrast to the first place we had been dropped off by the mashutka. Here the houses were very down at heel and there was nothing fancy about it at all.

One of the selling points for Batumi is the beach. The thing is, though, that the beach really isn't very good. There is no sand only large stones, and the water is far from suitable for swimming. There is a strong current and the stones will easily cut bare feet. Most of the others went in the water, just to be able to say that they had swum in the Black Sea, but I didn't see any point in drowning so early on during the trip.