The next day, we hired a driver and headed east from Tbilisi! I had read about a service called GoTrip, which worked so well. It functions as a long distance taxi service, and gives you a flat rate for a specified route. You can match with people in various languages as well which was helpful to have a driver that we could talk to. The route I picked started at the Uplistsikhe archeological site.
The site is from around 1000 – 2000 BCE, and is a town carved out of the rock. It was really cool, and we got there pretty early so we had it practically to ourselves. The one negative is that there isn’t a ton of information about it on site, so most of what I know about it I’ve gotten from Wikipedia. Still, it was interesting to climb over the rocks and explore the various structures.
Fun fact, when we first bought our tickets, the woman at the counter asked us if we wanted to see the wine cellar. It was a little extra, but it was interesting, she said. So we paid a few extra dollars and went on our way. When we got to the part that said wine cellar, we learned that what we had actually paid for was a wine tasting – at about 10:30 am! It was fun to try a couple different wines, but it was also quite a bit earlier than any of us had planned on drinking that day.
Once we had our glasses of wine, we got back on the road toward Gori. Basically the only thing that Gori is known for is being the birthplace of Stalin. There are statues of him, the house where he was born, a park named after him, and a museum that talks about his life.
As you know, I am fascinated by propaganda, so I had a great time at the Stalin museum. Which, by the way, gives an unexpectedly rosy view of his reign. I would say the general narrative is that he was a part of the Russian Revolution alongside Lenin, then he defeated the Nazis, and then he died. Here’s a photo of him signing a new law! A law that does what, you ask? Don’t worry about that at all!!! He got rid of Nazis!!! Did we mention that part???
There is a small annex in the ground floor that mentions some of the death and prison camps and exile to Siberia, but you have to go looking for it. The majority of the museum is beautiful oil paintings and Central Asian carpets with his face on them and gifts that were given to him from various other world leaders. It was very interesting to see the way they presented this period of history.
Once we were done at the museum, we headed to the Memorial of Georgian War Heroes. My friends were deeply unprepared for the scale of this monument as we rounded the corner. The statues were super cool, especially with their location at the base of the Gori Fortress.
It took us a while to find lunch in Gori. There weren’t a lot of options and most of them seemed to be closed. But we eventually found a place to eat more of those delicious Georgian dumplings, and then it was off to our last stop of the day before we headed back: Borjomi!
Borjomi is a resort town known for its mineral water. There’s a brand of bottled water called Borjomi, although I certainly hope its water tastes better than what we tried out of the spring. Allegedly, it has some sort of healing qualities, although I would have to be pretty sick to want to drink its hot and sulfurous stream again.
The park was pretty nice, and we walked along for a while until we were ready to go back to Tbilisi. During our walk, we found another probably-haunted Soviet amusement park, which is still one of my favorite aspects of this region.
Borjomi was unlike anywhere else we went in Georgia, but it was also pretty small and didn’t have much to do. There is a Romanov palace near by but it’s now on private property and not accessible to the public, which is a big bummer. Maybe in the summer more of the park would be open, but that also seemed like it was more designed for children. There might have been more to do on the other side of the river in town, but it didn’t seem worth having our driver take us back into town to wander around when we could just go back to the city. It was beautiful, though, and it wasn’t that far from Gori, so definitely worth the visit as a part of this day trip.
It was a really interesting day out of Tbilisi. I think this is the most “off the beaten path” we managed to get in Georgia – Tbilisi is very popular, and the two other day trips we chose are the two top choices for most tourists. And with good reason, I loved Kazbegi and I loved the wine tasting tour. But it was also nice to get a different side of the country, both literally and metaphorically. Also, if you’re like me and you’re interested in propaganda, the Stalin Museum is top tier. 10/10 would recommend.