{"id":211,"date":"2011-10-25T06:45:11","date_gmt":"2011-10-25T06:45:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ouritalianfarmhouse.com\/ourstory\/?p=211"},"modified":"2026-01-18T14:20:54","modified_gmt":"2026-01-18T14:20:54","slug":"first-day-in-tbilisi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ouritalianfarmhouse.com\/ourstory\/2011\/10\/25\/first-day-in-tbilisi\/","title":{"rendered":"First Day in Tbilisi"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

At 4:00 in the afternoon, it\u2019s snack time\non the streets of Tblisi.  Men,\nwomen, and children are walking and eating\u2014puffs of golden brioche, large disks\nof cheese-filled khatchapuri, foot-long sausages wrapped in pastry like\noversized pigs-in-blankets.  It is\nmy first day here and I\u2019ve been wandering the city center, taking care not to\ngo too far from the Marriott Courtyard on Freedom Square.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In the high-rent neighborhood of our hotel,\nthe shops are mainly of the Cartier and Versace kind and not unusual or particularly\ninteresting.  On the other hand,\ninformal shopping malls in underground pedestrian cross-walks beneath the broad,\ntree-lined avenues offer a fascinating variety of goods from hand-knit mittens,\nsocks, and vests to bananas and persimmons (eaten hard and crunchy here), and  from used books in Russian, French, and\nGeorgian  to original art to hair\nscrunchies in neon hues.  Most\nvendors sit beside their offerings, which are laid out on a low table or on the\nground in boxes, but there are a few shops too, and that is where I find my\nfirst purchase\u2014a Georgian-English phrasebook for 15 lari (just under $10 at 1.6\nlari to $1 USD).  I conclude the\ntransaction by consulting the book and using my first word of Georgian:\ngmadlobt (\u201cthank you\u201d).  The\nGeorgian alphabet (5 vowels, 28 consonants) resembles the Elvish script of JRR\nTolkien\u2019s Middle Earth: strange, curvilinear letters, quite beautiful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think I\u2019ve never seen more public art than here in Tbilisi, especially sculpture.\u00a0 This varies from the monumental gilded statue of St George–as always, on horseback, slaying the dragon\u2014atop a great pillar in a vast fountain at the center of Freedom Square; to a series of whimsical figures seated on pedestals set in the sidewalk; to a jazz saxophonist in bronze, his head, hat, hands and horn protruding from the marble-clad fa\u00e7ade of a building, along with his right knee and the tips of his shoes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Flower sellers along Rustaveli Avenue display dahlias the size of salad plates in gorgeous bright colors\u2014fuschia, orange, flame-tinged yellow.\u00a0 The scent of frankincense wafts from the shops of icon sellers along Leselidze Street.\u00a0 Devout Georgians cross themselves three times when passing a church or the statue of St George. \u00a0\u00a0Orthodox Christian priests wear long grey hassocks, their untrimmed beards flowing to the waist.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the Eastern way, pairs of men and women\nhere walk hand-in-hand or arm-in-arm.    <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My first day in Tbilisi was cool and dry,\nwith pale sunlight and crisp air. \nI walked all afternoon until I realized I was very tired.  I bought a new mobile phone, a\nphrasebook, lunch in a hotel restaurant, and a banana.  I hated to go indoors, but I returned\nto the Marriott for a 20-minute nap before meeting Jim for dinner.  I\u2019m looking forward to more exploring tomorrow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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At 4:00 in the afternoon, it\u2019s snack time on the streets of Tblisi.  Men, women, and children are walking and eating\u2014puffs of golden brioche, large disks of cheese-filled khatchapuri, foot-long sausages wrapped in pastry like oversized pigs-in-blankets.  It is my first day here and I\u2019ve been wandering the city center, taking care not to go
+ Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-at-home-in-georgia","category-other-places-other-times"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ouritalianfarmhouse.com\/ourstory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ouritalianfarmhouse.com\/ourstory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ouritalianfarmhouse.com\/ourstory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ouritalianfarmhouse.com\/ourstory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ouritalianfarmhouse.com\/ourstory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/ouritalianfarmhouse.com\/ourstory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2048,"href":"https:\/\/ouritalianfarmhouse.com\/ourstory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211\/revisions\/2048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ouritalianfarmhouse.com\/ourstory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ouritalianfarmhouse.com\/ourstory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ouritalianfarmhouse.com\/ourstory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}