It's very famous and I just had to see it, but I didn't know the name of it. I tried to find it online and I read that it was at the top of a hill with a church at its entrance. I found a place on the map that fit the description and aimed Tom in that direction.
Half way across town we drove on a windy road up a hill that seemed more like a small mountain, and parked in a parking lot that was paved at a steep angle.
While we thought the car was parked at a steep angle, we weren't prepared for the hike we had to get to the top of the hill. We took a rest break at the second hairpin turn and still had one more to go, plus stairs inside the church yard.
As you can see we had a commanding view of the city from the base of the church yard. Mom wouldn't go near the railing; the drop off was too steep. Once we reached this point, Lexi refused to sit in the stroller anymore and prefered to hover around the edge of the sidewalk.
This is the church we found at the top of the road--the Mamadaviti (Mother of David) Church. (The steeple on the right is not really crooked... I spliced two pictures together so I could fit the whole church in.) So a church was there, but there was no sign of a fortess anywhere. Puzzled, we left.
Lexi, as I said would not stay in the stroller anymore, and since she wanted to walk along the railing all the time, we tried to trick Lexi into holding our hands by saying things like, "Lexi, why don't you help Grandma walk down the steep hill." Here is Lexi, helping Grandma down the hill... with a good push.
Still in search of the fortress, I decided to attach the approach from a different angle. We drove down the hill across the rest of town, up another small-mountain hill, figuring we could walk down to the fortress. At the top of this hill, we found the Mtatsminda Amusement Park. It's a sprawling park, with a dozen mediocre rides and one of the highest ferris wheels in the world, and a cute little train that shuttles people around. There was a lot of reconstruction going on and signs were posted advertising new rides coming soon. Hopefully it's true.
There was no fortress here either. So after we walked what seemed like forever on an empty stomach, we climbed back in the car and headed down the hill. But there was such a wonderful smell coming from this place along the road, we just had to stop. We couldn't read Georgian and there was no English or Russian signs, so we didn't know what we were stopping for, but we couldn't pass it up. Later I found out this outdoor restaurant is called Taglaura and it's a chain.
This Taglaura had a small indoor restaurant that looked like a bar wrapped around a grill, several cabanas big enough for a party of six or eight, and a dozen picnic tables, many under umbrellas where you could eat with a stray dog begging at your heels. We had beef and chicken shish kabobs, french fries, some meat dumplings, some bread and washed it down with some Georgian beer (or apple juice.) We may not have found the fortess on this excursion, but we did find a really neat place to eat.



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