Zugdidi

The plan was to go from Batumi to Mestia in the Greater Caucasus. To go there  took a marshrutka to Zugdidi. Unfortunately a guy entered my bus whose smell was a delight mixture of sweat, pee and "old man" - and I had to sit besides him, damn!. Some similar guys came in and all drove to Poti without having any luggage. I have no other explanation than that they are poor harbor workers who simple only have one set of clothes and even sleep in them.

Zugdidi is an unexpected larger city of Georgia located very close to the border with Abkhazia. Therefore many refugees of this very cruel war lives in Zugdidi and its population therefore grew quite rapidly.

There is much life going on in the streets and there are some nice parks, restaurants and parks. The Dadiani Palace museum is located in the largest park. It was unfortunately Monday and therefore it was closed. The market close to the bridge over the Chkhoushi river is a very nice one.

The railway station where also the marshrutkas start and end.

Inside the market.

 

I like that they drape the fruits so nicely.

You know already that I like soviet reliefs.

The park with the Dadiani palace to the left
and the Niko's palace to the right

The palace hosts now a branch of the Georgian national museum.
At the  right is the Vlakerni Virgin Mary church

I nice avenue in the park.

At the entrance to the botanical garden

It is impressive how much was built in the last 10 years.
This is the backside of the town administration.
The park around it is a special one with many water plays
on concrete plates. It looks more interesting than
on this image (the weather and light was too bad that day)

Somewhere in the town.

Another nice one.

Many such large houses are currently built.

In the center of the town.

The beginning of the main boulevard.

Along the boulevard.

The plan was not to visit Zugdidi but to go to Mestia. But nobody else wanted to go there so that the marshrutka driver sent me away after 2 hours of waiting. Then I found a private shared taxi and heard about heavy snow in the mountains making hiking impossible. Moreover the road was blocked with snow the day before and while waiting in the taxi it was packed full with big canisters of diesel. They didn't want to fix the canisters despite I tried to explain that they can become very dangerous if they are not fixed if the car has for example has to do a full stop. This fact was for me the final issue to stop the trip to Mestia. Now I know that this was not too bad because this way I had the time to go to the beautiful Nagorno-Karabakh.