Kutaisi, Georgia

We spent the morning in  Kutaisi, which was founded just under 4000 years ago.  We visited the Bagrati Cathedral , built during the reign of King Bagrat III in the 11th century.  The floor was apparently laid in 1003.

There are some relics of saints in the cathedral.  Relics are bones and here it looks like mainly leg bones, maybe arm bones.  I'm not really into bones so can't be sure-

The outside has some nice and intricate stone carrving-

Next we went to the market which is a typical fruit, vegetable and meat market.  We saw coffee beans, peaches, nectarines, bananas, raspberries, cucumbers, onions, potatoes etc.  A trolley of butchered pig carcasses was being pushed down the aisle and another woman had small chickens plucked and cleaned.  For some odd reason, I kept my camera in my pocket but here's a picture of some stalls-

This was an interesting load-

It is very windy today and it looks like that's normal here.  It's maybe hard to see in this picture but the trees are all slanted towards the north.  Even worse than at home!

Two specialities here are Turkish coffee, sweet, strong and in a demie-tasse-

and khachapuri - a cheese pie that is absolutely delicious-

Here is kebab being grilled on an outdoor bbq-

The landscape changed from lots of trees, through the Borjomi-Kharagauli National Park, to this-

We are bush camping beside this river tonight - everyone is washing in the cool, fairly clean flow!