27-30 August 2012: Moving to T'bilisi, Georgia

On August 27^th (Monday), Grandma Sharon, Grandpa Bryce, Lexi and I loaded all our luggage into Auntie Abby’s mega-van at 3 pm and headed for the airport for our “four-day” journey to Tbilisi.  We got on our plane at 5pm, flew to Chicago, boarded our next plane and departed around 8pm.  We landed in Munich, Germany around noon on August 28th (Tuesday), went through customs, collected our luggage and checked into Hotel zum Erdinger Weissbräu in Erding, Germany.

The town of Erding is just fifteen minutes from the Munich Airport, and the hotel we stayed in was built 400 years ago and is currently owned by a well-known beer company.  It was the perfect place to stay for an overnight stop-over.  (The other option was to hang out in the airport with a jet-lagged two-year-old from lunch time till 9 PM.)



Bavarian restaurant Zeitlos in Erding, Germany

We caught a quick nap, took a refreshing shower, and had time to window shop and explore before going to dinner outdoors at a Bavarian restaurant surrounded by ruins.  Grandpa Bryce enjoyed his meal so much, I doubt he’ll soon forget how tasty it was.  Despite the jetlag, Lexi was such a trooper.  She slept just five hours on the plane and made it through the day without a single meltdown, and was still able to sleep a full eleven hours that night. 



Lexi's first ride on a train/metro.

Our next flight was at 9 PM at night, so we paid for a late check out and spent most of Wednesday as tourists.  We jumped on the local train, which is much like the subway, and rode into Munich to check out the Munich Zoo.  Considering we took a leisurely approach to the morning and had an hour’s ride to the zoo, we didn’t get to see much, but it was a beautiful day and we got plenty of sunshine, fresh air and exercise.  Lexi caught a cat nap in the stroller and we made it back through the subway and local train system back to the hotel just in time to meet the shuttle back to the airport.  By 9 pm we were taking off in another plane that arrived in Tbilisi at 4 am on Thursday.  Lexi was wide awake when Tom met us and she spent her reunion pointing out letters in airport café signs to him.  When we got to our “new home” we all crashed for a few hours.

By ten in the morning we were all up and getting showered for some exploring and a Georgian dinner.  Tom took us to Old Town, the part of Tbilisi that retains its historic buildings and charm.  All the streets are narrow, winding, and cobblestone or hand-laid brick.  Most of the buildings have wrap-around balconies and sit at the foot of Narakala Fortress.  In this area there are also ancient sulfur spring baths and some realy old churches, a mosque and a synagog.  There was a lot of reconstruction going on at the time we were there because Tbilisi, the capital of the country, was getting ready for their parlamentary elections and everything was being refurbished, repaired, and repainted.




There are also several restaurants in Old Town.  Adjacent to the main square there are Arabic, Indian, Chinese, French and of course Georgian restaurants.  We chose Restaurant Seidabadi, which smelled really good and appeared to serve Moroccan and Georgian food.  The place was deserted due to the time of day and we were able to choose a booth with lots of cushions.  We ordered way more than we could eat and discovered that Georgian cheese is rather salty and some of them are smoked, Coke still comes in small glass bottles and have lots of fizz, and meals cost about a half of what they would cost in the states.  Dad had his first taste of Georgian beer and both he and Tom agreed it was pretty good.

After dinner, we weary travelers were ready to pass out again.  I think we all slept pretty well that night.