Dégustation

More of the same today - poor sleep and warm weather (sunny and 28⁰c) causing a bit of lethargy.

Eating three times as much as usual last night did not help. 

It is fine, of course. I am on holiday, plus tomorrow will involve some more travel. 

Getting away from work has been good news. Whilst I enjoy 80% of it, and I have no career ambitions to put myself under pressure, it can be very intensive. 

Escaping Brexit is not possible, sadly, but being 1,700 miles from home does help! 

Being away from home also reminds me how easy it is to live under the permanent shadow of the task list - or lists in my case. Even if I am 100% relaxing at home, I always have those outstanding items on the lists somewhere in the back of my mind.

In the afternoon I took the cable car to the Botanic Garden - one of the places I enjoyed in May. It is cooler when the city is warm, and I really enjoyed some more meandering. 

The evening - hmmm.

A “wine experience” run by the same people who did the food tour last night. Of course Georgian wine is a closed book to almost all outsiders, but a huge part of their culture. Well, we (Czechs, Germans, Polish, a semi-Croat and the ever present Scot) learned a huge amount. Almost as much as we drank, I suppose.  

We tried 7 Georgian wines plus a couple of shots of tchatcha. 

My favourite was the Rkatsiteli. That’s the name of the grape. Georgia has many native grape varieties of which only 45 are used to make wine. I will not even try to explain tchatcha…

Blips! 

It has to be the “tour guide” for the wine evening, in full flow. 

The Extra is the Peace Bridge with Mtekhi Church behind it.